Capitalism is failing us today

[CommunityBeliever]

Dear OI members, kapitalyst made a thread capitalism has failed us praising the historical achievements of capitalism. Marxists recognise that capitalism is historically progressive, however, we also state that capitalism is failing us today. I have gotten into a very long discussion with kapitalyst about this, worthy of being broken off into a new thread.


You consider verbosity a "technical problem" and you consider that verbose? You've just written very clear, concise code. I consider this verbose and annoying:



(defun factorial (n)
(loop for i from 1 to n
for fac = 1 then (* fac i)
finally (return fac)))

That isn't verbose that is just very poor design. That doesn't use lazy sequences which are available in Common Lisp with the clazy package (http://common-lisp.net/project/clazy/). Otherwise you can express this in terms of intensional lists (functions on ℕ):



(defun upto (n)
(loop for i from 0 to n collect i))

(defun factorial (n)
(apply #'* (upto n))
There is no *systemic verbosity* in Lisp like there is in heteroiconic languages like C# because you can abstract away any concepts using macros.


And that doesn't even do justice to the parenthesis madness... :lol:

That is an irrational prejudice. The concept of sequences (represented in Lisp with parenthesis) is intuitive and natural. On the other hand, *precedence tables* are not. I remember many students in elementary school that have trouble grasping them.

You clearly have a pretty good grasp on syntactic languages and precedence as you use them and you are prejudiced against non-syntactic languages like Lisp, but you probably still don't fully comprehend the entire C# operator precedence system and all of its categories such primary, unary, multiplicative, additive, shift, relational and type testing, equality, logical AND, logical XOR, logical OR, conditional AND, conditional OR, conditional, and assignments:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa691323(v=vs.71).aspx (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa691323%28v=vs.71%29.aspx)

Considering this, you inevitably will have to use brackets to clear things up yourself. Actually, some programmers in languages C# use just as many brackets (such as parenthesis) as Lisp users.


I don't use C very often. But C still has great uses in low-level programming. It's very lightweight, fast and requires no runtime environment, for one. It's portable to any platform, two.C is a terrible language and possibly the worst in use today and it should have died out thirty years ago, or at least a decade ago when it was completely outdone by D.


C is not garbage collected. That should be enough for anyone.
Low-level programming is itself a flawed concept. In the Lisp machines there was no low level programming language because the entire operating system was written in Lisp.
C is not portable to any platform. It is based upon a specific platform: UNIX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix) with very specific conditions.

Erik Naggum pretty thoroughly demolishes C (http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/1c0fd1ffdb5d1b8b).


There are plenty of reasons. The main reason being superior performance and being close to the metal. You can get a lot done that way if/when you need to.Actually, since 2003 clock speed improvements have stalled resulting in the multicore age. The main way to have superior performance is to use concurrent programming, which is ridiculously painful to achieve without garbage collection. Not to mention that most modern garbage collectors are more efficient then manual memory managment.

Erik Naggum also responded to a user who used C based upon just speed. (despite the fact that C isn't actually particularly suited for high-performance tasks related to concurrency and distribution):

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/thread/567df5923ced5a94/52564cc186195b05#52564cc186195b05

Ask him why he thinks he should be able to get away with unsafe code, core dumps, viruses, buffer overruns, undetected errors, etc, just because he wants "speed".


I respect your opinion, but most of the world disagrees with it, as do I.

With all due respect, most of the world doesn't know Lisp, and neither do you, by your own admission. When the world knows Lisp and still disagrees with it, then get back to me.


You're looking at it, using it and simultaneously cursing it! :lol:Yes I am "cursing" the software industry despite being in it because I saw the death of AI and the Lisp machine market, followed by the continuation of totally deficient anti-Lisp systems.


This "new system" actually being an old, 1800s system that doesn't work and never worked? :lol:Capitalism is a 1700s system, so naturally we use a 1800s criticism of it (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/), which is still valid, because we still have the same basic system as before.

There is not "1800s system that doesn't work and never worked" because Marx and Engels only provided a *criticism* not a detailed implementation of a new system. That has to be dealt with by people today.


So if we have a rainstorm it's the fault of capitalism too? As I've said before, I'm not merely a capitalist. I'm a free enterprise proponent. What we have today isn't free enterprise, and the whole world isn't even capitalist. It's more like crony pseudo-socialism with some private property ownership, maintained by authoritarian government.The entire world is capitalist except for a few small areas like the Red Corridor and small isolated islands like Cuba, and look at how shitty the world has become.

You say you support "free enterprise" however a better question is do you support profiteering? Do you support profit based organisations like Microsoft that have held back technological progress in the name of personal profit, or do you support *non-profit* organisations like the free software foundation (http://www.gnu.org/) that are fighting against that? Personally, I am against the profiteers even if they go under the name "free enterprise" and I am against the capitalist system which has allowed this to happen.

Microsoft


Ah, but that's not even what we were talking about. You were saying what Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did in the context of the capitalist system was wrong by its standards.

I do not follow the standards of capitalism, so I never blamed Bill Gates for not following its standards, but rather for being destructive and hindering progress with proprietary software and monopolisation.


I'm not merely capitalist. But anyway... monopoly doesn't last unless it's propped up by the state. Microsoft also never had a true monopoly. Microsoft was just kicking arse because it had the most appealing product. We can make many good arguments about Linux being better at A, B, C and Mac being better at X, Y, Z... But consumers didn't think so. Plain and simple. And I'll take a so-called "monopoly" any day when it's giving me something I like for a better price than any competitor would.

Technically, a monopoly doesn't need state backing, it just needs singular control over a resource. That is what Microsoft still has to do this day. Its hard to find personal computers without Windows preinstalled. The consumers don't have any choice when its a monopoly.


And now, Apple is larger than Microsoft. Apple is winning the game thanks to their mastery of the mobile market. It's what consumers want now. The anti-trust suit against Microsoft achieved nothing other than slightly irritating Bill Gates. The market busted Microsoft's dominance, all on its own. It will happen again, too. Apple won't always be the juggernaut it is now. The reason no one can compete with these companies isn't because they have monopolistic control, it's because no one can deliver superior products and pricing. And we as consumers are just fine with it.

Apple has its own psuedo-monopoly in the mobile market (iphones, ipods, ipads, etc), and Microsoft has its own monopoly on desktop operating systems (windows), and google has a virtual monopoly in search. They are all monopolies in their own industries.

The market hasn't busted Microsoft's dominance since it still has singular control over desktop operating systems and it has had that for decades, apple just took over a different market. Capitalism tends towards creating monopolies and corrupt big corporations. It is the nature of the system, one group out-competes the rest or buys them out and eventually emerges on top, then it stifles competition and technological development. Apple is probably even worse then Microsoft now because of DRM.


I disagree. It appears effective, in a few cases, but it's restricting its own proponents from a world of business opportunity.On the contrary, DRM is very profitable, the corporate managers are smart and they know how to find the most profitable actions. If you think DRM and the suppression of information technology isn't profitable what is your alternative?


Sigh... This is just typical anti-Microsoft conspiracy theorism. The additional components that come along are helpful. Few people take this sort of stuff seriously.It is not "conspiracy theorism." As you are using a programming language that was created by Microsoft and its continuing development is dependent upon Microsoft's every whim, you are going to subservient to the malevolent interests of Microsoft that involve suppressing technology with proprietary software, artificial scarcity, and software patents:

http://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono

The problem is not unique to Mono; any free implementation of C# would raise the same issue. The danger is that Microsoft is probably planning to force all free C# implementations underground some day using software patents. (See http://swpat.org (http://swpat.org/) and http://progfree.org (http://progfree.org/).) This is a serious danger, and only fools would ignore it until the day it actually happens. We need to take precautions now to protect ourselves from this future danger.

http://www.osnews.com/story/21586/Mono_Moonlight_Patent_Encumbered_Or_Not_

The way I understand it now is that the Common Language Infrastructure and the C# programming language are ECMA standards - they may or may not be patent-encumbered (this is unclear). If they are patent encumbered, then they must be made available under "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms". Mono is an open source implementation of the CLI and a C# compiler. On top of that, Mono implements several technologies around .Net which are not Ecma standards, and these technologies are certainly covered by patents.


The type system is fine. As I mentioned before C# is actually technically a relatively good language because it has features like garbage collection. Furthermore, Microsoft has been adding much needed features to the language over time like type inference and lambdas which has made things much better :thumbup1:.

But there is still much to done as it still has an excessive manifest typing system and it is verbose as I showed before. I don't want to be dependent upon Microsoft to fix things, just look at how bad they messed up the entire world wide web through internet explorer (aka idiot exploiter). Lisp doesn't have as many systemic problems through the use of an optional type system and it allows you to fix things yourself with macros, freeing you from external dependencies, so I still believe Lisp is far superior.

Additionally, as far as I know, C# still has only very *limited* support for enforced immutability, which is something that is pretty important for FP and concurrency:

http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Enforced_immutability


public class myClass {
public const double PI = 3.14159;

public readonly maxsize;
public readonly minsize;
}Lisp machines


Bro, if this were actually true and the Lisp machines were worth bringing back, I'd be the first one to hand you a lab, staff and a few million in funding to do it. It would be worth untold fortunes. But it's really not, which is why no one is bothering to bring back the defeated technology.

You have millions of dollars and you can protect us from the criminal capitalist organisations like Microsoft that will try to suppress our technology and our productivity? Lets go for it then! It sure would be nice if we didn't have to fight up against a corrupt system in the process though wouldn't it?


I know it had hardware support. But as I already said, the PC could run Lisp on software faster than the Lisp machine could run Lisp.

Modern PC architecture exists because it beats everything else on performance and price.

I know that modern hardware is a zillion times faster then what the Lisp machines have, but I still use my Lisp machine, it is right here next to my computer, and the reason is use it is simple. Without software a computer is just a bunch of glass, wire, and plastic. Similarly, without good software your new computers are not going to be fully utilised, and systems with infinitely better software like the Lisp machines are still attractive.


I think you're having some nostalgia for those old Lisp machines. There's nothing they could do that my PC can't do better (and for cheaper and less energy consumption). I mean, shit...

There is nothing these Lisp machines can do that your PCs cannot do better, that is true. But you need the software to make your machine actually do something in the first place. There is no software that runs on modern machines that is remotely comparable to the stuff that runs of Lisp machines, so until that day comes, I will still use my twenty year old Lisp machine.


if anything, if the Lisp machines were worth it, it could be a great weapon in digital warfare by its inherent superiority. Someone would re-develop the technology to use it. But it's simply not...

You seem to doubt that its possibly for technologies to be suppressed... Well let me tell you it absolutely is, it is everywhere around you that you encounter DRM, artificial scarcity, etc. If you don't believe me, everything is there for you to uncover. Look back at all the technologies the capitalist criminals have suppressed.

Psychology


Human beings are doomed to corruption.

On the contrary, human beings are generally peaceful, and they wouldn't ever be really violnet without weapons like spears, axes, and later guns and corrupt scarcity-based economic systems like capitalism that make them desperate. People are generally kind and they are social, human intelligence mainly evolved for social communication which is why language is intrinsic in human neurological framework.


The six theories of motivation:The theory of motivation I generally subscribe to and have been referring to is Maslow's hierarchy of needs:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg/500px-Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg.png
Humans require that they have the bottom two levels satisfied first and foremost, and it is this which keeps all of the workers stuck in the exploitative relation with the capitalist criminals, because if they didn't work they wouldn't have their physiological and safety needs met (food, water, shelter). On the other hand, if those fundamental needs are met (which they will be for everyone under socialism) then people can focus on higher needs like social relations and intellectual development.


The "profit motive" is what drives our behavior (not all profit is money) as human beingsYou are using a different definition of profit then me. Wants and needs are what drive human behaviour, according to my definitions.


And even in many examples one attempts to give to demonstrate altruistic behavior, it is often pseudo-altruistic -- benefits others to benefit oneself.Actually, there are many cases you can find that people have demonstrated altruistic behaviour, and besides, that is all the more reason we need a system which encourages people to be productive rather then being destructive.

In capitalism people are led to be destructive and to hinder technological progress, like what happened to the Lisp machines during the AI winter and what is continuing to happen with proprietary software and artificial scarcity.


This is one of the fundamental reasons I reject communism and collectivism. The social model simply will not work.The social model has worked on thousands of occasions in the past, see for example the Paris commune.


In fact, the failure of open-source to beat commercial software is an exemplary example of the fact. It has nothing to do with the "corporate machine" or "capitalist system". On the contrary, it is completely a result of the capitalist system, particularly the price system which is totally arbitrary, rather then based upon a fundamental resource like energy, my technocratic comrades have been stating for years that using energy accounting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accounting) would vastly improve technological development and productivity.

[Red Rabbit]

I have a love-hate relationship with C#. I love it's simplicity and ability to speed up production time, but I can't stand Microsoft and how they seem to be dead set on not porting C# to other operating systems.

In any case, I have to use Objective-C for my work. :/

[Robert]

Man, I know you worked your ass off on that post and I admire you for it. I just don't have time to digest it all and, honestly, the programming stuff is over my head with my current education.

But you really, really need to stop with this business if you want to move the revolution forward:


The social model has worked on thousands of occasions in the past, see for example the Paris commune.

Man won't have any choice but to organize local economies to survive after an apocalyptic event, and so we will, but it's not a model to aspire to in today's global economy.

Same for the Zapatista's, same for the Latin Communities, same for Catalonia. I do admire them all.

[IcarusAngel]

I'm not sure how much of this I agree with. C, C#, java, all have a similar lineage. Java, for instance, took heavily from the design and implementation of C++. The theoretical foundations are predicate calculus. Lisp is based on lambda calculus correct? But it probably has no more real connection to lambda calculus that C has to predicate calculus. All contain certain abstractions that some programmers prefer more than others. The designers made these decisions.

There basically were lisp machines, but von Neumann machines won out, not only in the market place but also in government research sectors and so on. This started in the first generation (EDVAC and so on), and the stored program concept was a huge advancement at the time.

[IcarusAngel]

I should add I agree with all your political points on microsoft and so on. I just disagree it's really "capitalism's false" that we don't use lisp machines. It would also have to be the fault of researchers and computer scientists and industry together.

[Skooma Addict]

Nerds.

[CommunityBeliever]

I'm not sure how much of this I agree with. C, C#, java, all have a similar lineage.

Java, C, C++, C#, PHP, Objective C, JavaScript, etc (most languages used today) share a common lineage that goes back to Algol. For example, they all maintain the statement-expression distinction.


int factorial(int n) {
int result = 1;
for (int i = 1; i <= n; ++i) {
result *= i;
}
return result;
}

public static long fact(final int n) {
if (n < 0) {
System.err.println("No negative numbers");
return 0;
}
return (n < 2) ? 1 : n * fact(n - 1);
}
using System;

class Program
{
static int Factorial(int number)
{
return Factorial(number, 1);
}

static int Factorial(int number, int accumulator)
{
return number == 0 ? accumulator : Factorial(number - 1, number * accumulator);
}

static void Main()
{
Console.WriteLine(Factorial(10));
}
}Notice the use of the term "return" in each of those implementations, this is because you must specify that your return value is an expression. This is a flawed feature that goes back to Algol, which had a distinction between statements and expressions. Some of these languages (C# and Java) also share a common lineage with smalltalk which is why they use hard to read camelcase terms like WriteLine.

The best of the languages you mentioned is C# because it managed to take on Lisp features like *garbage collection*, which is an absolutely fundamental feature, but it still hasn't caught up to Lisp's effectiveness as it still has many immanent flaws as I have already mentioned.


Lisp is based on lambda calculus correct?

Lisp is based upon the fundamental principles of cognitive science, and the specific goal of creating artificial intelligence (AI). Its fundamental data structure is the cons cell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cons), but lambdas are probably the next most important because they generalise cons over a larger domain.


I should add I agree with all your political points on microsoft and so on. I just disagree it's really "capitalism's false" that we don't use lisp machines. It would also have to be the fault of researchers and computer scientists and industry together.

It isn't necessarily the fault of the "industry together" because the entire industry died out during the AI winter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter)! Now you may not blame capitalism itself for Lisp's demise, but the fact remains we are using terribly stupid and painful to use computer systems today, all the well living under capitalism.

[IcarusAngel]

Java also has garbage collection.

[CommunityBeliever]

Java also has garbage collection. However, Java still lacks lambda expressions which as you mentioned are a fundamantal Lisp feature. C# throw these on around version 3.0 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397687.aspx), but since they are just a secondary thrown on feature, the language is still far from being useful for functional programming (it also lacks enforced immutability and has a restrictive type system), and therefore it remains flawed:


delegate int del(int i);
static void Main(string[] args) {
del myDelegate = x => x * x;
int j = myDelegate(5); //j = 25
}

[kapitalyst]

That is an irrational prejudice. The concept of sequences (represented in Lisp with parenthesis) is intuitive and natural. On the other hand, *precedence tables* are not. I remember many students in elementary school that have trouble grasping them.


That is your opinion, and a reasonable one. But as I've said, few people agree. I know people who've used Lisp and many other languages, and most people don't find the parenthesis madness very intuitive at all.



You clearly have a pretty good grasp on syntactic languages and precedence as you use them and you are prejudiced against non-syntactic languages like Lisp, but you probably still don't fully comprehend the entire C# operator precedence system and all of its categories such primary, unary, multiplicative, additive, shift, relational and type testing, equality, logical AND, logical XOR, logical OR, conditional AND, conditional OR, conditional, and assignments:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa691323(v=vs.71).aspx (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa691323%28v=vs.71%29.aspx)

Considering this, you inevitably will have to use brackets to clear things up yourself. Actually, some programmers in languages C# use just as many brackets (such as parenthesis) as Lisp users.


I do fully comprehend the operator precedence system. That's generally found in the first few pages of basic programming books. True though, people use parenthesis to clear things up. There's really no comparison there though. I have to be careful writing complex formulas (e.g., physics equations) because too many parenthesis gets difficult to read.



C is a terrible language and possibly the worst in use today and it should have died out thirty years ago, or at least a decade ago when it was completely outdone by D.


C is not garbage collected. That should be enough for anyone.
Low-level programming is itself a flawed concept. In the Lisp machines there was no low level programming language because the entire operating system was written in Lisp.
C is not portable to any platform. It is based upon a specific platform: UNIX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix) with very specific conditions.



1) The fact that C is not garbage collected becomes a strength, not a weakness, in low-level programming tasks. In GC'ed languages, you're only as good as the built-in memory management and GC system. And no single one is suitable to all tasks. I've written my own operating systems and memory managers before, and C was a wonderful choice (even though, admittedly, C is a bit annoying). The advantages become more pronounced when you're targeting tiny systems, like consumer electronics and some mobile devices.

2) How is low-level programming a flawed concept? The high-level is simply an abstraction of the low-level and details of the machine. Low-level programming allows you to create and optimize your own systems that work the way you intend. Libertad! :cool:

Memory management and garbage collection are good things, but how do they work? Low-level programmers wrote them, and all the parts of the system required to make it work. What if you want to write your own? Write your own OS? Write drivers to communicate with devices/peripherals? You use low-level programming. I know what you're going to say: "You didn't have to do X, Y, Z on Lisp machines." True. In that case it just becomes hardware construction (extremely low-level) vs low-level programming. Then programmers are always stuck with that system, even if they know how to write a better one.

3) Actually, C is portable to anything. And it doesn't only run on Unix. It's running on my NT-based system right now, obviously. C (and other mid-level languages) were created for just that reason. Assembly languages and micro-code are only operable on specific processors. You can write a C compiler that spits out any machine instructions you desired. You could even, for the sake of argument, write a compiler that spits out IL or Lisp! Visual Studio Pro comes right out of the box with compilers for x86, x64, Itanium, ARM, etc. You just check a box and you compile for the hardware you're targeting. And as I said, you can do that for anything.



Erik Naggum pretty thoroughly demolishes C

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/1c0fd1ffdb5d1b8b

C was "efficient" on a PDP-11. It is inefficient on everything created ever since that CPU design was abandoned. On modern processors, C is actually anti-efficient due to a number of relationships between processor, memory, and the outside world.

C is not clean -- the language has _many_ gotchas and traps, and although its semantics are _simple_ in some sense, it is not any cleaner than the assembly-language design it is based on.

C is not fast -- it is instead microoptimizable, so it looks as if you control the speed of your code, but instead of generating fast code for problem-solving, the compiler generates no excess machine code relative to _your_ code. This is the same "fast" as assembler, where you would have to be lobotomized beyond recognition to believe that instructions counts equated speed.

He has some points, but most of this I must respectfully disagree with. Have you ever tried writing an operating system kernel before? Drivers?



Actually, since 2003 clock speed improvements have stalled resulting in the multicore age. The main way to have superior performance is to use concurrent programming, which is ridiculously painful to achieve without garbage collection. Not to mention that most modern garbage collectors are more efficient then manual memory managment.


Multi-threading can indeed be difficult on certain native APIs. But you're dealing with the operating system itself. If you know the language very well and have intricate knowledge of the system, it's not so bad. I wrote my own TSS engine for my "hobbyist OS". It has a steep learning curve and can be difficult, but I simply don't see any inherent flaws here. Today's CPUs are bad ass little machines, and performance is astounding. I won't deny it's an absolute breeze in C# though, since you don't worry about the machine or OS so much.



Erik Naggum also responded to a user who used C based upon just speed. (despite the fact that C isn't actually particularly suited for high-performance tasks related to concurrency and distribution):

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/thread/567df5923ced5a94/52564cc186195b05#52564cc186195b05

Ask him why he thinks he should be able to get away with unsafe code, core dumps, viruses, buffer overruns, undetected errors, etc, just because he wants "speed".

No offense, but just reading a few parts of that guy's thread immediately reveals him as what I call a "language clergyman" -- and the writing has a very arrogant and insulting tone, but says little. He is a known flamer, and thinks everything should be done his way and everyone else is stupid to the point of criminality. These guys exist for every language that exists, but he is an extreme example of it. And more often than not, they talk about what they hate, about this and that, and what they don't want people to do (like religious fundamentalists :lol:).

However, I do believe C is approaching extinction. It is old... it is archaic... it is a pain in the ass... I don't think many hardcore C programmers deny that. But C has stayed around so long because it actually was (and still is) useful, and it is small and fast. Mr. Erik is simply wrong that it only "feels" faster. These things have been benchmarked and measured. Good C programmers can write code that really is exceptionally fast and efficient. But yes, the language itself is ultimately doomed to be replaced by superior offspring.



With all due respect, most of the world doesn't know Lisp, and neither do you, by your own admission. When the world knows Lisp and still disagrees with it, then get back to me.


That simply isn't true. Lisp has been around a long time, and a lot of people know it and have used it. It just never caught on. And it's not going to, IMHO. It's simply not the answer to everything (no language is), and people don't find it as great as some of its vicious advocates tout it as being.



Yes I am "cursing" the software industry despite being in it because I see how thoroughly deficient the non-Lisp systems, and I saw the death of AI and Lisp machines.


I still don't get this... Lisp machines were simply beaten. If they were/are better, developing modern versions would be a gold mine... something with which a group of college students could threaten Microsoft. But things have unfolded as they should have. Sometimes even the best dinosaurs just go extinct. :lol:



Capitalism is a 1700s system, so naturally we use a 1800s criticism of it, which is still valid, because we still have the same basic system as before.


Modern market economies and free enterprise were born in the 1700s, not capitalism itself. There are examples of it long before. Notably, the Hanse traders circa 1200-1500AD.



There is not "1800s system that doesn't work and never worked" because Marx and Engels only provided a *criticism* not a detailed implementation of a new system. That has to be dealt with by people today.


Marx actually did outline what he wanted to happen, and people have tried to implement it. It didn't work. Good people like you are unable to stop the movement from going awry -- you're generally the first ones to be killed because you're intelligent, outspoken and truly have conviction in your principles, and you pose a threat to those who want to misuse it to dominate the masses.



The entire world is capitalist except for a few small areas like the Red Corridor and small isolated islands like Cuba, and look at how shitty the world has become.


If, by that, you mean the entire world has some form of private property/capital then sure. But that's not the system, just a minimal part of it. We advance the ideas of a free society and free marketplace, not simply private property. Private property on its own gets us nowhere.



You say you support "free enterprise" however a better question is do you support profiteering? Do you support profit based organisations like Microsoft that have held back technological progress in the name of personal profit, or do you support *non-profit* organisations like the free software foundation (http://www.gnu.org/) that are fighting against that? Personally, I am against the profiteers even if they go under the name "free enterprise" and I am against the capitalist system which has allowed this to happen.


Making products and selling them to people is not unethical. Businesses want to produce the greatest technology they can because it would equal greater profit. I totally reject this notion that there is some conspiracy going on to keep technological development stunted.



Technically, a monopoly doesn't need state backing, it just needs singular control over a resource. That is what Microsoft still has to do this day. Its hard to find personal computers without Windows preinstalled. The consumers don't have any choice when its a monopoly.


I said they need state-backing to last. No monopoly can last forever without it. It's simply not true that all PCs have Windows pre-installed. If you go into a Best Buy, sure... their PCs all have Windows. Why? That's what consumers want. People who use PCs want Windows. They also have no idea how to install an OS and set up their computer. So most retailers take care of this for them. Nothing, however, prevents one from buying a PC with a blank slate or building their own (like I did).



Apple has its own psuedo-monopoly in the mobile market (iphones, ipods, ipads, etc), and Microsoft has its own monopoly on desktop operating systems (windows), and google has a virtual monopoly in search. They are all monopolies in their own industries.

The market hasn't busted Microsoft's dominance since it still has singular control over desktop operating systems and it has had that for decades, apple just took over a different market. Capitalism tends towards creating monopolies and corrupt big corporations. It is the nature of the system, one group out-competes the rest or buys them out and eventually emerges on top, then it stifles competition and technological development. Apple is probably even worse then Microsoft now because of DRM.


Apple has indeed broke Microsoft's dominance. The market has seen a fundamental change. PCs are now only needed for business and a few other purposes. Most consumers simply want to browse the web to play on Facebook, shop on Amazon and check email. Mobile devices do all of those things in a cheap, compact package.

Some even call this "death of the PC", because mobiles are in higher demand. I disagree, however. PCs will always be around, even if their importance diminishes to some degree. A mobile just cannot compete with a PC in processing power and memory. Businesses and people like me will always need them. But without getting into the mobile market with a better product, Microsoft will never wear a crown again. Their stock has gone nowhere for over a decade now.



On the contrary, DRM is very profitable, the corporate managers are smart and they know how to find the most profitable actions. If you think DRM and the suppression of information technology isn't profitable what is your alternative?


As you've acknowledged, DRM doesn't boost sales. Sometimes it even loses sales. Developers still buy into the idea the closed systems and tight regulation of their technology is good. It would be better to move away from DRM, and for businesses to embrace each others' technologies. They can create whole new markets for themselves and 3rd party developers. Removing platform limitations and moving in the direction of multi-platformism would be the smartest move they could make.

Microsoft would be a bygone today had they not opened up the doors, shared their APIs and begun to become progressively more liberal and less "black box-ish". It's also been a very smart move to allow their .NET technology to be implemented for other systems by third parties. Let Apple continue to make the mistakes MS once did. Eventually, someone is going to roll a superior product and crush them outright.



It is not "conspiracy theorism." As you are using a programming language that was created by Microsoft and its continuing development is dependent upon Microsoft's every whim, you are going to subservient to the malevolent interests of Microsoft that involve suppressing technology with proprietary software, artificial scarcity, and software patents:

http://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono

The problem is not unique to Mono; any free implementation of C# would raise the same issue. The danger is that Microsoft is probably planning to force all free C# implementations underground some day using software patents. (See http://swpat.org (http://swpat.org/) and http://progfree.org (http://progfree.org/).) This is a serious danger, and only fools would ignore it until the day it actually happens. We need to take precautions now to protect ourselves from this future danger.

http://www.osnews.com/story/21586/Mono_Moonlight_Patent_Encumbered_Or_Not_


Except Micrsoft never did those things, despite people warning that they would for years. Microsoft has realized that they've created a great technology and they have great commercials tools and software for it they can sell. Its of benefit to them to let the technology be freely used on all systems. They've made no attempts to "force free C# underground", and they're not going to. Their interests are not malevolent at all. We share mutualistic interests. They've done more for me as a developer than they ever had to, and my interest in their technology can benefit them right back. And seeing that their "whim" has been to continually make the technology better and benefit people like me, I'll take it.



The way I understand it now is that the Common Language Infrastructure and the C# programming language are ECMA standards - they may or may not be patent-encumbered (this is unclear). If they are patent encumbered, then they must be made available under "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms". Mono is an open source implementation of the CLI and a C# compiler. On top of that, Mono implements several technologies around .Net which are not Ecma standards, and these technologies are certainly covered by patents.


The CLI is not patent-encumbered. It too is standardized. And what non-standard technologies? Winforms and such? That's no secret. But Microsoft doesn't care. They don't sell Winforms anyway. They see an opportunity here, as do I. With .NET becoming a multi-platform technology, there's going to be a growing market for 3rd party developers. More software targeting Windows is inherently a good thing for Microsoft -- a good and free technology like this is good for developers, and more software is good for users. Microsoft isn't stupid. They're not going to blow millions going to court to destroy one of the best business positions they could ask for. They also don't want to be dicks and turn their crucial third party devs like me against them. I can't remember who said it, but one of MS's execs said "We learned the hard way that being a bully is not good for business [...]". Anti-Microsoftians just don't want to admit we have a great thing here. Of course, they're the same ones who refused to use DirectX just because Microsoft made it, so we can't take it too seriously. :lol:



As I mentioned before C# is actually technically a relatively good language because it has features like garbage collection. Furthermore, Microsoft has been adding much needed features to the language over time like type inference and lambdas which has made things much better :thumbup1:.


Exactly.



But there is still much to done as it still has an excessive manifest typing system and it is verbose as I showed before. I don't want to be dependent upon Microsoft to fix things, just look at how bad they messed up the entire world wide web through internet explorer (aka idiot exploiter). Lisp doesn't have as many systemic problems through the use of an optional type system and it allows you to fix things yourself with macros, freeing you from external dependencies, so I still believe Lisp is far superior.


Microsoft has done an excellent job of keeping .NET and C# up to par. Very few bugs are ever found. And the language and runtime is constantly improving by leaps and bounds. C# simply isn't verbose. Most people find it very easy to read, even those who don't know how to program. And what about IE, and what does it have to do with this?

Optional typing can get very confusing. Most people, like me, find imperative and OOP the most intuitive and logical thing. It's one thing I hate about Javascript. And I have no idea what you mean by "Fix things yourself with macros".



Additionally, as far as I know, C# still has only very limited support for enforced immutability, which is something that is pretty important for FP and concurrency:

http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Enforced_immutability


public class myClass {
public const double PI = 3.14159;

public readonly maxsize;
public readonly minsize;
}


I have no problem implementing immutable types. In fact, it's highly customizable and flexible. Also, your example wouldn't be very useful. When you use the readonly keyword, you either have to assign value at declaration or within a static constructor. The readonly keyword isn't the proper way of doing this. Here's a better example of type containing a buffer which becomes immutable after construction/assignment:



public class ImmutableBuffer
{
public ImmutableBuffer(byte[] buffer) {
if (buffer == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("buffer");

this.buffer = buffer;
}

public byte this[int i] { get { return buffer[i]; } }
byte[] buffer;
}




You have millions of dollars and you can protect us from the criminal capitalist organisations like Microsoft that will try to suppress our technology and our productivity? Lets go for it then! It sure would be nice if we didn't have to fight up against a corrupt system in the process though wouldn't it?


No, I don't have millions of dollars on hand. I'll be incorporated before the end of 2012 and in a position of being able to secure venture capital and financing, however... provided the goals are realistic and viable.

The only corrupt system and process you have to fight against is government cronyism and over-regulation. It's made my life and entrepreneurial efforts far more difficult than it should have been, in ways I could have never imagined.

When I launch my tech subsidiary, I'd happily take you in to work on any project I felt was viable. You obviously have the intelligence and CS background. My employees will all get sizable salaries and extra compensation through stock in the company. I think making my employees owners of the company will make them be not just mere workers but partners, create solidarity and cohesion and align our interests. I'll let you know when it's open for business. You just have to play nice and be a good little capitalist! :lol:



I know that modern hardware is a zillion times faster then what the Lisp machines have, but I still use my Lisp machine, it is right here next to my computer, and the reason is use it is simple. Without software a computer is just a bunch of glass, wire, and plastic. Similarly, without good software your new computers are not going to be fully utilised, and systems with infinitely better software like the Lisp machines are still attractive.


All computers are meaningless without software. Lisp machine or not. I don't see your point here.



There is nothing these Lisp machines can do that your PCs cannot do better, that is true. But you need the software to make your machine actually do something in the first place. There is no software that runs on modern machines that is remotely comparable to the stuff that runs of Lisp machines, so until that day comes, I will still use my twenty year old Lisp machine.


I simply have to beg to differ.



You seem to doubt that its possibly for technologies to be suppressed... Well let me tell you it absolutely is, it is everywhere around you that you encounter DRM, artificial scarcity, etc. If you don't believe me, everything is there for you to uncover. Look back at all the technologies the capitalist criminals have suppressed.


I don't doubt that it's possible. The best and cheapest technology ultimately wins out in a free market system. It's simply worth more money than inferior technologies. That's why the steam engine beat the horse and buggy industry. As I've said many times, if Lisp machines were indeed superior no one could stop someone from making new ones to turn the whole industry on its head.

Take, for example, the issue of "green" energy. Thus far, no one has come up with a viable technology. It is, however, the "holy grail" -- even oil companies like Exxon are spending billions to try to find it. Everyone knows the days of primitive energies like oil are numbered, and there are better ways. And those better ways will ultimately be found. Whoever finds it will be showered with wealth.

Government, however, is getting in the way. Their corporate welfare system and cronyist policies have done a lot to interfere with the market hunt for viable renewable energy sources. A lot of Democrats ***** about "corporations that don't pay taxes", then elude to General Electric. Yes, General Electric... the corporation their Dear Leader, Chairman Obama, is in bed with and granting tax loopholes and outright welfare benefits to support his "green" policies. This is ultimately suppressing all of the other companies, especially the small ones, who may (and often do) have better and more efficient ideas.



On the contrary, human beings are generally peaceful, and they wouldn't ever be really violnet without weapons like spears, axes, and later guns and corrupt scarcity-based economic systems like capitalism that make them desperate. People are generally kind and they are social, human intelligence mainly evolved for social communication which is why language is intrinsic in human neurological framework.


I say nay... In fact, we made weapons because we are violent creatures. People without weapons still kill each other. They will even create improvised weapons out of almost anything. This is worthy of another thread too -- one which I was already planning to start.

Capitalism is not scarcity-based, and it's not even the system at work here; the market economics system is. This is a complete misunderstanding of marginal value, price mechanism and simple supply/demand. Scarcity may generate higher prices, but destroys demand and results in less profit. The optimal point in profit maximization is to adequately meet demand without oversupply. Market economics are equilibrium and competition-based. Walmart understands this quite well. The grocery store industry has the highest competition and lowest profit margins of practically every sector.



The theory of motivation I generally subscribe to and have been referring to is Maslow's hierarchy of needs:

Humans require that they have the bottom two levels satisfied first and foremost, and it is this which keeps all of the workers stuck in the exploitative relation with the capitalist criminals, because if they didn't work they wouldn't have their physiological and safety needs met (food, water, shelter). On the other hand, if those fundamental needs are met (which they will be for everyone under socialism) then people can focus on higher needs like social relations and intellectual development.


My criticism of Maslow's hierarchy is that it doesn't actually describe drive or motivation, but just the order of precedence. Instinct and drive-reduction are the basis of human motivation, and our incentive and cognitive drives rest atop that. That is why behavior tends to follow the order of precedence of Maslow's hierarchy.

Socialist views of human nature (or the outright denial of its existence) are, no offense, very naive and idealistic. Human beings are animals... just intelligent animals. We're also not the only intelligent animals that are sociable and can be cooperative. But above all, individual animals care about themselves and their own survival and comfort. Our social behaviors have evolved/developed because they are in the best interest of the individual. If you and I are lost in the jungle after a plane crash, it's of benefit to me to work with you to survive. Two men can build better shelter than one. We can split up to search for help and resources. We can carry more fuel for our fire, water and other things. We can help each other make better tools. But if we find ourselves trapped and desperate, as you admit, we will kill each other over a piece of bread. Cooperative behavior no longer benefits each ourselves, so we fight.

True altruism, like giving to charities or helping people who are not your concern is a learned behavior. We have to teach our children to share toys, food, etc... and they generally don't like it very much. And these learned behaviors quickly evaporate when a compelling self-interest arises. We revert to our instinctual greedy (and sometimes violent) behaviors. It's also interesting to note that humans are one of the few animals which kill for the sake of pleasure. We're not as wonderful and nice as we like to delude ourselves into believing.



You are using a different definition of profit then me. Wants and needs are what drive human behaviour, according to my definitions.


Certainly. And what I'm saying is that it's our self-interest that makes us pursue those things. When your stomach growls, you go eat. If it comes down to it, you'll steal food or kill for it.



Actually, there are many cases you can find that people have demonstrated altruistic behaviour, and besides, that is all the more reason we need a system which encourages people to be productive rather then being destructive.


I didn't say there wasn't...

However, free enterprise encourages people to be productive. Everyone must work to get what he wants, and benefit others in some way by what he/she produces or does. Socialism actually provides a greater incentive to do nothing, and take advantage of others' apparent good will.



In capitalism people are led to be destructive and to hinder technological progress, like what happened to the Lisp machines during the AI winter and what is continuing to happen with proprietary software and artificial scarcity.


Again, completely untrue...




The social model has worked on thousands of occasions in the past, see for example the Paris commune.


Oh, c'mon now... ;)

[CommunityBeliever]

Abstraction levels
Abstraction levels form a *continuum.* There is no discrete space of "low level" or "high level" abstractions, and the idea of such a space is a flawed concept that neglects the continuous reality of abstractions. This was represented in the Lisp machines by the "Lisp all the way down" principle, in which Lisp was used to program the entire system from the bottom up with no separate space of "low level languages" like C and no separate space of "high level languages" like Python and Ruby.


How is low-level programming a flawed concept?

Our abstraction levels form a continuum, so the idea of any definite "low level" space that you can program to is ridiculous.


The high-level is simply an abstraction of the low-level and details of the machine. Low-level programming allows you to create and optimize your own systems that work the way you intend. Libertad! :cool:

What exactly is "low level" and what is "high level"? Is C really low level? Assembly programmers state that C is high level because it is compiled, are they correct? However you define "low level" and "high level" is arbitrary because our abstraction levels are really a continuum.


Memory management and garbage collection are good things, but how do they work? Low-level programmers wrote them, and all the parts of the system required to make it work. What if you want to write your own? Write your own OS? Write drivers to communicate with devices/peripherals? You use low-level programming. I know what you're going to say: "You didn't have to do X, Y, Z on Lisp machines." True. In that case it just becomes hardware construction (extremely low-level) vs low-level programming. Then programmers are always stuck with that system, even if they know how to write a better one.

1) I don't know exactly what you mean by "low level" and "extremely low level." These are ill defined concepts. They certainly don't make sense when you use Lisp for everything, and you slow build up your abstraction level with macros.

2) In the Lisp machines you didn't have to explicitly manage memory because there was hardware level support for garbage collection.

Portability
Port-ability is the relative easiness of the of the process of porting a platform to some other Turing-complete platform. This is based upon the *local usage share* of that platform.


Actually, C is portable to anything. And it doesn't only run on Unix. It's running on my NT-based system right now, obviously. C (and other mid-level languages) were created for just that reason. Assembly languages and micro-code are only operable on specific processors. You can write a C compiler that spits out any machine instructions you desired. You could even, for the sake of argument, write a compiler that spits out IL or Lisp! Visual Studio Pro comes right out of the box with compilers for x86, x64, Itanium, ARM, etc. You just check a box and you compile for the hardware you're targeting. And as I said, you can do that for anything.1) Actually, any platform is portable to any other Turing-complete platform (including any Turing machine). You can use hardware virtualisation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualization#Hardware) to port any assembly language or micro-code program to any other platform, just as you port any C program to any Turing machine.

2) The vital question is the extent to which the platform itself is shared across the local domain. Instruction set archictectures (ISAs) aren't shared to a considerable enough extent, which is in itself representative of the *systemic deficiency* of the existing social organisation of our productive forces (capitalism). Ideally, if Lisp machines were used then there would be considerable hardware level portablity.

3) The incompatibility of ISAs necessitates the existence of a shared software platform for portability to occur. We can call this platform "UNIX" or "C-space" if you prefer. C-space uses a set of conventions shared across ISA's so that it can run on almost any of them. The principal problem is that the fundamental conventions of C-space are immanently deficient, for example, in the standard C-space library: stdio.h describes the IO model and stdlib.h decribes basic manual memory allocation, both of these effect formulations are flawed relative to the model of distributed GC-based SASOS's.

Garbage collection
Modern *configurable* concurrent epheremal copying garbage collectors are incredibly advanced and efficient. They can be be made even more efficient by providing hardware level support to GC processes. GC is a vital feature to basically all the fundamanteal elements of modern computer systems such as functional programming, orthogonal persistence, structural sharing, concurrency, distributed programming, etc. Manual memory management on the other hand, is incredibly painful, not to mention *dangerous* as it can result in dangling pointer bugs, double free bugs, etc. This means that the cases where it is better to not use a GC are quite rare.


In GC'ed languages, you're only as good as the built-in memory management and GC system. And no single one is suitable to all tasks. I've written my own operating systems and memory managers before, and C was a wonderful choice (even though, admittedly, C is a bit annoying). The advantages become more pronounced when you're targeting tiny systems, like consumer electronics and some mobile devices.1) You can extend, configure, and improve the garbage collector so you aren't "only as good as the built-in GC system."

2) You can turn off the garbage collector in a GC language, and use explicit memory management if you need to, or go down to inline assembly. Although, the cases in which doing this makes sense are rare.

3) As an example of this is that D is a fully garbage collected programming language. Its garbage collector is configurable, extensible, and optional, and you can go down to inline assembly if you need to. In the context of these conditions D has been used as the foundation of entire operating systems like xomb (http://code.google.com/p/xomb/) including device drivers components and embedded systems programs. Considering this, can you think of any good reason to use C over D?

C sucks
The fundamental reason that C sucks is that it is not garbage collected, as mentioned before, so if you believe C doesn't suck, then first demonstrate why garbage collection isn't an absolutely fundamental feature of modern computer systems.


No offense, but just reading a few parts of that guy's thread immediately reveals him as what I call a "language clergyman" -- and the writing has a very arrogant and insulting tone, but says little. He is a known flamer, and thinks everything should be done his way and everyone else is stupid to the point of criminality.Can you actually address any of the points presented by comrade Erik Naggum?

http://groups.google.com/group/comp....0fd1ffdb5d1b8b (http://www.anonym.to/?http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/1c0fd1ffdb5d1b8b)

C was "efficient" on a PDP-11. It is inefficient on everything created ever since that CPU design was abandoned. On modern processors, C is actually anti-efficient due to a number of relationships between processor, memory, and the outside world.

C is not clean -- the language has _many_ gotchas and traps, and although its semantics are _simple_ in some sense, it is not any cleaner than the assembly-language design it is based on.

C is not fast -- it is instead microoptimizable, so it looks as if you control the speed of your code, but instead of generating fast code for problem-solving, the compiler generates no excess machine code relative to _your_ code. This is the same "fast" as assembler, where you would have to be lobotomized beyond recognition to believe that instructions counts equated speed.


He has some points, but most of this I must respectfully disagree with.

I still maintain that these points are true:

1) C is not garbage collected which prevents it from being efficient or fast in an actual sense. It is only efficient in the potential sense, that if you are a great *human computer* then you may be able to manage to make C work well.

2) C is not clean because it has fourty years of historical baggage, that it has never recovered from. The language is also dangerous as it often results in buffer overflows and other problems.


Have you ever tried writing an operating system kernel before? Drivers?1) Lisp OS's do not have a kernel because they have a single large distributed virtual address space.

2) I am an operating system designer, so yes I have worked for countless hours on creating OS's and that includes working on kernels and device drivers to some extent, probably not so much on kernels as they are another flawed concept of our capitalist-onset technological dark age.


However, I do believe C is approaching extinction. It is old... it is archaic... it is a pain in the ass... I don't think many hardcore C programmers deny that. But C has stayed around so long because it actually was (and still is) useful, and it is small and fast. What you "believe" is contrary to the actual data. C is actually getting more popular, at least according to Tiobe (http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/paperinfo/tpci/C.html):

http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/images/history_C.png

C is here to stay, it is not going anywhere anytime soon. For an alternative source, langpop actually puts C as the most used programming language today in its normalised comparison.


Mr. Erik is simply wrong that it only "feels" faster. These things have been benchmarked and measured. Good C programmers can write code that really is exceptionally fast and efficient. But yes, the language itself is ultimately doomed to be replaced by superior offspring.

C can be efficient if you are already an efficient human computer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer) yourself. However, some functional programming languages, like Lisp and Haskell have transparent optimisation, in that they can generate fast code for problem solving without explicit specification (as mentioned above by Erik Naggum).

Microsoft sucks
The products of Microshit are themselves utter shit, and the best they can do is give you a shitty looking blue screen:

http://www.pcstats.com/articleimages/200409/BSOD_2.gif

Another thing is that those Microshit mother-fuckers have ruined the entire world wide web! The web could've been a great means of transmitting information across the world, but it isn't in large part because of what Microshit did with its idiot exploiter program.


That's what consumers want.

The Windows UI is not based upon the principles of human cognition, and its core system is inefficient. These are things no human consumer wants, but they put up with it just as they put up with the exploitation the capitalist system everyday.

There are also things like marketing and advertisements that make people think they want something, so what people really want really want rarely factors into the equation in capitalism. This too has been addressed by comrade Naggum:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/thread/caebf480c2640bb0/c2fd86a7e43ac7aa#c2fd86a7e43ac7aa

what people “want” is a function of what they learn is available. e.g., do Americans want three-ring binders, and Europeans four-ring binders? or do they want binders and take whatever number of holes they come with? or do they want something that can help them organize their papers and take whatever is available? or do they really want a less cluttered office and ease of storage and retrieval of the information they receive? so, did people really _want_ three-ring binders, or is that just what they could buy? …look at Microsoft. nobody in their right mind would want their buggy shit. what Microshit users want is something entirely separate from the products. Microshit is _not_ user-friendly, but it is marketed as user-friendly, and then other software products, far more user-friendly, are made to look as if they missed the whole point about what “user-friendly” _is_, namely to look cool in nice colors while you’re crashing and destroying the disk, importing a virus from a disk, or letting Word destroy your day’s work.

the problem is, what people _want_ is so far removed from the market and so abstract that it takes designers, creators, producers and trend setters to _give_ it concrete shape. they transform your want of a good night's sleep into a want of a waterbed, for instance. they transform your combined wants of status and a means of transportation into a want of a particular model of a car, and a _renewed_ want of a car every so often to maintain that "status" thing.

designers, creators, producers, etc, do not build what people want, they _give_ people something _concrete_ to want, to afford, to buy, that they wouldn't want, wouldn't fund, wouldn't wish to buy until _after_ it had been created. the difference between a producer and a consumer is that the producer is able to produce what the consumer will consume but is himself unable to produce, for lack of time, intelligence, fantasy, economic means, whatever.


I said they need state-backing to last. No monopoly can last forever without it.No denumerable set of qualities in spacetime can persist forever, so what is this about "lasting forever"?


Apple has indeed broke Microsoft's dominance. The market has seen a fundamental change. PCs are now only needed for business and a few other purposes. Most consumers simply want to browse the web to play on Facebook, shop on Amazon and check email. Mobile devices do all of those things in a cheap, compact package. As I mentioned before, Microsoft still dominates in one area: desktop computers. If you go to best buy, what do you see on every desktop PC? Windows.


Microsoft would be a bygone today had they not opened up the doors, shared their APIs and begun to become progressively more liberal and less "black box-ish". It's also been a very smart move to allow their .NET technology to be implemented for other systems by third parties.The only reason that challenge came to Microsoft is because of the struggle of non-profit institutions (the fsf) against the capiatlist criminal interests, not because the criminals themselves decided to accept progress.

These days the capitalist system mainly thwarts progress and development, but through the long hard struggle against entrenched capitalist interests some progress manages to arise, but is that enough to offset the destruction and the depletion? Its hard to say. The world may actually be getting worse (rather then progressing over time) due to capitalism.

C# programming


I have no problem implementing immutable types. In fact, it's highly customizable and flexible. Also, your example wouldn't be very useful. When you use the readonly keyword, you either have to assign value at declaration or within a static constructor. The readonly keyword isn't the proper way of doing this. Here's a better example of type containing a buffer which becomes immutable after construction/assignment:That is not the same thing as having *idiomatic* support for immutability or functional programming. This is covered by Rich Hickey:

So a functional approach was something that I had already started doing, even in programs I was writing in C#. For instance, there were parts of the national exit poll system that were very functional, even though it's a C# system, because the way to defend yourself against this complexity is to write in a more functional style with a lot more immutability. The problem is that it's not very idiomatic in C# or Java to do so. I wanted to make a language where it was—where the default was to do the right thing. When you needed mutability, there would be a good story about how to do that compatibly with concurrency.


Except Micrsoft never did those things, despite people warning that they would for years. Microsoft has realized that they've created a great technology and they have great commercials tools and software for it they can sell. Its of benefit to them to let the technology be freely used on all systems. They've made no attempts to "force free C# underground", and they're not going to. Their interests are not malevolent at all. We share mutualistic interests. They've done more for me as a developer than they ever had to, and my interest in their technology can benefit them right back. And seeing that their "whim" has been to continually make the technology better and benefit people like me, I'll take it.Microsoft exerts considerable control over C# and it benefits from it, which means C# will end up serving some of Microsoft's malevolent interests no matter what.


The CLI is not patent-encumbered. It too is standardized. And what non-standard technologies? Winforms and such? That's no secret. But Microsoft doesn't care. They don't sell Winforms anyway. They see an opportunity here, as do I. With .NET becoming a multi-platform technology, there's going to be a growing market for 3rd party developers. More software targeting Windows is inherently a good thing for Microsoft -- a good and free technology like this is good for developers, and more software is good for users. Microsoft isn't stupid. They're not going to blow millions going to court to destroy one of the best business positions they could ask for. They also don't want to be dicks and turn their crucial third party devs like me against them. I can't remember who said it, but one of MS's execs said "We learned the hard way that being a bully is not good for business [...]". Anti-Microsoftians just don't want to admit we have a great thing here. Of course, they're the same ones who refused to use DirectX just because Microsoft made it, so we can't take it too seriously. :lol:Microsoft developed C# not to create a great technology, but rather to challenge the control of Java. C# was a direct copy of Java, and most of the good features in the language were added on later (like lambda expressions).


Exactly.Yeah, exactly, when you rip off someone elses technology (Java) which happens to be crap anyways, then any good features that you have will need to be added on later (lambda expressions). There is still much to be done of course.


Optional typing can get very confusing. Most people, like me, find imperative and OOP the most intuitive and logical thing. It's one thing I hate about Javascript. And I have no idea what you mean by "Fix things yourself with macros".Imperiative programming is an intuitive thing. Lisp is an imperiative programming language. That doesn't have to contradict functional programming though, especially since functional programming lends considerable advantages towards concurrency.

Techno-suppression
Capitalism is a corrupt system that suppresses technological developments like the Lisp machines and that perpetuates artificial scarcity and DRM, not to mention its corrupt nature in which the working class are alienated from the products of their labor and their surplus value is exploited. In fact, I call what we are going through right now a dark age because of what the capitalist criminals are doing.
That is your opinion, and a reasonable one. But as I've said, few people agree. I know people who've used Lisp and many other languages, and most people don't find the parenthesis madness very intuitive at all.That is because most people that are living in our capitalist-onset technological dark ages are trained with immanently deficient programming languages like C/C++/Java rather then Lisp. Besides, the parenthesis are far from the fundamental feature of Lisp, other elements like garbage collection are far more important.


That simply isn't true. Lisp has been around a long time, and a lot of people know it and have used it. It just never caught on. And it's not going to, IMHO. Lisp is actually not that well known and its age has nothing to do with that. Besides, as I have been mentioning, it is the fundamental features, of Lisp and the Lisp machines that are essential as they could vastly improve our productivity.


It's simply not the answer to everything (no language is), and people don't find it as great as some of its vicious advocates tout it as being.Technically Lisp is capable of doing literally everything (see Lisp all the way down), but I do agree that we should introduce some UI extensions, for example, with visual programming systems like blocky-io (http://blocky.io/).


I still don't get this... Lisp machines were simply beaten. If they were/are better, developing modern versions would be a gold mine... something with which a group of college students could threaten Microsoft.

Right now the Western capitalist countries are mall economies (http://imperialistsoweuniversally.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-challenges-communist.html). That is they are entirely focused on creating artificial scarcity and artificial demand. You can see this whenever you turn on your computer or go to a website: there is advertisments. Advertisments to create artificial demand to get you to buy things. Our best and brightest are literally employed in artificial jobs getting people to buy things, rather then in any productive role.

In our socialist economy, these artificial and destructive occupations will be eliminated and everyone will be employed on new technological projects like creating friendly AI, taking into consideration to lessons of the early AI pioneers, including those working on the Lisp machines. Furthermore, we will be able to create vast new technologies like nuclear fusion, molecular assemblers, nanofactories, interstellar spacecraft etc.


As you've acknowledged, DRM doesn't boost sales. Sometimes it even loses sales. Developers still buy into the idea the closed systems and tight regulation of their technology is good. It would be better to move away from DRM, and for businesses to embrace each others' technologies. They can create whole new markets for themselves and 3rd party developers. Removing platform limitations and moving in the direction of multi-platformism would be the smartest move they could make.

DRM does boost sales and profits, just in a *different sense* and it absolutely is profitable. The only challenges to DRM come outside the capitalist system from groups like the fsf that oppose capitalist decadence.


The only corrupt system and process you have to fight against is government cronyism and over-regulation. It's made my life and entrepreneurial efforts far more difficult than it should have been, in ways I could have never imagined.The only corruption I am fighting against is the capitalist profiteers. I only fight against the state because the state is a tool used by the capitalists. The capitalists are the true enemy and the source of government cronyism in the first place.


When I launch my tech subsidiary, I'd happily take you in to work on any project I felt was viable. You obviously have the intelligence and CS background. My employees will all get sizable salaries and extra compensation through stock in the company. I think making my employees owners of the company will make them be not just mere workers but partners, create solidarity and cohesion and align our interests. I'll let you know when it's open for business. You just have to play nice and be a good little capitalist! :lol:If you do get around to it, it would be nice to be able to develop the Lisp machines, if not I can wait a century or so until the human race socially progress to world socialism. That will allow us to have friendly AI (an early version being what Lispers developed), nuclear fusion, space based solar power, advanced automation, molecular assemblers, etc. Unfortunately, I don't see this happening under capitalism as people aren't put into their most productive occupations or put to develop technology.

Even though it is well known what technological solutions we should implement (many of them seen in the Lisp machines, but also in other systems like Sprite OS) there is nobody fucking doing it. Its frustrating because I love technology and our social forces are contradicting that.


I simply have to beg to differ.You have stated on what point you differ.


I don't doubt that it's possible. The best and cheapest technology ultimately wins out in a free market system. Well as you said before we don't really live in a free market system :thumbup1:

Since libertarian capitalism is a pipe dream, nobody has really lived in a truly free market system.


As I've said many times, if Lisp machines were indeed superior no one could stop someone from making new ones to turn the whole industry on its head.You keep saying "if it were true" without giving any evidence as to why it isn't true. Its true, the Lisp machines had incredible advantages like single address space orthogonal persistence that have been lost.


Take, for example, the issue of "green" energy. Thus far, no one has come up with a viable technology. It is, however, the "holy grail" -- even oil companies like Exxon are spending billions to try to find it. Everyone knows the days of primitive energies like oil are numbered, and there are better ways. And those better ways will ultimately be found. Whoever finds it will be showered with wealth. On the contrary, there isn't an adequate effort being put into alternative energies, in part because those existing capitalist interests don't want to see technologies that threaten their share of capital. When socialism comes along we will have a Kardashev-1 society with new energy technologies like nuclear fusion and a global energy network, because socialism vastly improves our productivity.


Government, however, is getting in the way. Their corporate welfare system and cronyist policies have done a lot to interfere with the market hunt for viable renewable energy sources. A lot of Democrats ***** about "corporations that don't pay taxes", then elude to General Electric. Yes, General Electric... the corporation their Dear Leader, Chairman Obama, is in bed with and granting tax loopholes and outright welfare benefits to support his "green" policies. This is ultimately suppressing all of the other companies, especially the small ones, who may (and often do) have better and more efficient ideas.Capitalism has always been a system tied up with the state. It has never happened otherwise, like libertarian capitalists apparently envision.



However, free enterprise encourages people to be productive. Everyone must work to get what he wants, and benefit others in some way by what he/she produces or does. No it doesn't, which is demonstrated by things like artificial scarcity, not to mention the many imperialist endeavours that capitalists are undertaking, like our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc, because war is very profitable!

So the truth is capitalism encourages people to be destructive it encourages violence, war, imperialism, destruction, etc. Not to mention the humongous amounts of waste the system produces. Just for a second abandon the propaganda that has been fed to you and consider this.


Again, completely untrue...Why is that "completely untrue"? Why should there be proprietary software or other forms of artificial scarcity?


Capitalism is not scarcity-based, and it's not even the system at work here; the market economics system is. This is a complete misunderstanding of marginal value, price mechanism and simple supply/demand. Scarcity may generate higher prices, but destroys demand and results in less profit. The optimal point in profit maximization is to adequately meet demand without oversupply. Market economics are equilibrium and competition-based. Walmart understands this quite well. The grocery store industry has the highest competition and lowest profit margins of practically every sector.Capitalism is based upon production for profit and profits occur when you can sell a scarce resource, so yes capitalism is scarcity based which is why we have artificial scarcity and planned obsolescence.

Artificial scarcity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_scarcity)
Planned obsolescence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence)

Psychology


I say nay... In fact, we made weapons because we are violent creatures. People without weapons still kill each other. They will even create improvised weapons out of almost anything. This is worthy of another thread too -- one which I was already planning to start.How do people without weapons kill each other exactly? With their bare hands lol? Humans are weak and flimsly animals by nature, so naturally they are peaceful and vegans as well. The idea that we are "hunters" or "violent creatures" is nonsensical.

Socialist views of human nature (or the outright denial of its existence) are, no offense, very naive and idealistic. Human beings are animals... just intelligent animals. We're also not the only intelligent animals that are sociable and can be cooperative.

There you go, we are sociable and cooperative, and we need a system which further encourages that rather then capitalism which makes people destructive and individualistic.


Our social behaviors have evolved/developed because they are in the best interest of the individual.

Thats not true, the interests of the species, the family, and the tribal group, are all factors. To say that individual interests is all that goes into it is nonsensical simplism.


True altruism, like giving to charities or helping people who are not your concern is a learned behavior. We have to teach our children to share toys, food, etc... and they generally don't like it very much.

Who the fuck said anything about sharing toys? We are going to share the means of production. Personal property like toys have absolutely nothing to do with it. Also, let me remind you there is nothing natural about the exclusive control of the means of production, that is something that arose in the last 12000 years after the elimination of the primitive communists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_communism).


Certainly. And what I'm saying is that it's our self-interest that makes us pursue those things. When your stomach growls, you go eat. If it comes down to it, you'll steal food or kill for it.

No. Our desires are what drive things, and are desires are largely determined by natural evolution. It may not always be personally beneficial to sexually reproduce (could lead to a STD) but people do it anyways to pass on the species. So the interests of the group often outweigh self-interest.


Marx actually did outline what he wanted to happen, and people have tried to implement it. It didn't work. Good people like you are unable to stop the movement from going awry -- you're generally the first ones to be killed because you're intelligent, outspoken and truly have conviction in your principles, and you pose a threat to those who want to misuse it to dominate the masses.

Marx outlined what he wanted to happen, which is working class democracy, but he never specified any system of implementation so we have no "outdated system from the 1800s." What actually gets implemented must be decidable by people today.

Personally, when it comes to implementations, I like a lot of what technocratic groups describe. Engineers, scientists, health professionals, etc should be able to exert control over part of society (technocracy) and I like the solutions of some technocratic groups like the venus project (http://www.thevenusproject.com/).


People have tried to implement it. It didn't work.

The cooperative social model has been used many times in the past and it has been proven not only to work but also to be superior. There are thousands of examples:

Paris Commune (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune)
Anarchist Catalonia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_Catalonia)
Red Corridor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_corridor)

[kapitalyst]

Abstraction levels form a *continuum.* There is no discrete space of "low level" or "high level" abstractions, and the idea of such a space is a flawed concept that neglects the continuous reality of abstractions. This was represented in the Lisp machines by the "Lisp all the way down" principle, in which Lisp was used to program the entire system from the bottom up with no separate space of "low level languages" like C and no separate space of "high level languages" like Python and Ruby.

Our abstraction levels form a continuum, so the idea of any definite "low level" space that you can program to is ridiculous.


Where did I say these were concrete things? You immediately understood what I was talking about, which is the purpose of the terminology. The terminology is itself an abstraction.



What exactly is "low level" and what is "high level"? Is C really low level? Assembly programmers state that C is high level because it is compiled, are they correct? However you define "low level" and "high level" is arbitrary because our abstraction levels are really a continuum.


What exactly is happiness, in the concrete sense? C is considered HL by assembly programmers, and LL by Java programmers. It's a matter of perspective; terminology simply used to denote how focused programming is on the hardware. Since I know everything from ASM to C#, I consider processor-specific assembly language LL, and managed languages HL. Unmanaged languages like C and C++ are mid-level to me.



3) The incompatibility of ISAs necessitates the existence of a shared software platform for portability to occur. We can call this platform "UNIX" or "C-space" if you prefer. C-space uses a set of conventions shared across ISA's so that it can run on almost any of them. The principal problem is that the fundamental conventions of C-space are immanently deficient, for example, in the standard C-space library: stdio.h describes the IO model and stdlib.h decribes basic manual memory allocation, both of these effect formulations are flawed relative to the model of distributed GC-based SASOS's.


I fail to see how stdio.h and stdlib.h are a problem. They simply encapsulate CSL logic into two static libraries, which are used together with ease.



Modern *configurable* concurrent epheremal copying garbage collectors are incredibly advanced and efficient. They can be be made even more efficient by providing hardware level support to GC processes. GC is a vital feature to basically all the fundamanteal elements of modern computer systems such as functional programming, orthogonal persistence, structural sharing, concurrency, distributed programming, etc. Manual memory management on the other hand, is incredibly painful, not to mention *dangerous* as it can result in dangling pointer bugs, double free bugs, etc. This means that the cases where it is better to not use a GC are quite rare.


Manual memory management is not that difficult, at least to me. And by "dangerous", I'm sure you mean your program just terminates or fails. Ever since I've started programming (many years ago), people have often lectured about this and that being "extremely dangerous"... In my opinion, that is a dramatic exaggeration for something that just might be a bit difficult to master.

The best reason not to use GC is because you don't want to -- plain and simple. Plenty programmers are smart enough to manage their own memory allocations/de-allocations and work with addresses. Sometimes programmers want to implement their own systems and memory management bottom-up. IMHO, that's their business and they have to deal with it.



1) You can extend, configure, and improve the garbage collector so you aren't "only as good as the built-in GC system."

2) You can turn off the garbage collector in a GC language, and use explicit memory management if you need to, or go down to inline assembly. Although, the cases in which doing this makes sense are rare.


Managed languages simply aren't suitable to everything, as I've already mentioned. Let's take, for example, the issue of graphics programming. Graphics hardware is growing insanely fast and powerful, but we still aren't close to true photorealism. We have to squeeze every drop of performance out of our GPUs to push triangles and texels to the screen. The only way you're going to get that fast is through native drivers. Then you need to communicate with those drivers, so we have native technologies like DirectX and OpenGL. After that, you can use managed code like SlimDX, OpenTK or XNA. The managed code works fine and can write great games, but it wouldn't be so great without super fast hardware and native drivers.

If I try to write a sophisticated simulation in C#, I often find myself writing my own memory and resource management system (well, really reusing and improving the one I've got). The built-in system isn't the greatest for rapid allocation and deallocation of many small objects on the heap. Then again, nor is the default C/C++ memory manager. So I write a heap buffer manager that works with raw memory and pointers, and can achieve a marked improvement in speed and efficiency. And it's faster to do this in C... I've clocked it, and it is.



The fundamental reason that C sucks is that it is not garbage collected, as mentioned before, so if you believe C doesn't suck, then first demonstrate why garbage collection isn't an absolutely fundamental feature of modern computer systems.


I've already gone over that several times, and again above.



Can you actually address any of the points presented by comrade Erik Naggum?

http://groups.google.com/group/comp....0fd1ffdb5d1b8b

C was "efficient" on a PDP-11. It is inefficient on everything created ever since that CPU design was abandoned. On modern processors, C is actually anti-efficient due to a number of relationships between processor, memory, and the outside world.

C is not clean -- the language has _many_ gotchas and traps, and although its semantics are _simple_ in some sense, it is not any cleaner than the assembly-language design it is based on.

C is not fast -- it is instead microoptimizable, so it looks as if you control the speed of your code, but instead of generating fast code for problem-solving, the compiler generates no excess machine code relative to _your_ code. This is the same "fast" as assembler, where you would have to be lobotomized beyond recognition to believe that instructions counts equated speed.


1) C can be very efficient if you use it correctly. Would he argue that assembly language is not efficient? C is just a more intuitive and abstract way of writing code that maps to assembly language relatively closely.



int i = 0;

while( ++i < 10 );

return i;

// -- or -- //

MOV EAX, 0x00

Loop:
INC EAX
CMP EAX, 0x0A
JNE Loop
PUSH EAX
XOR EAX, EAX
RETN


Excuse me if I wrote my ASM wrong, but I just did it off the top of my head with little thought. Of course, compilers generally output more robust code nowadays, but you get my drift.

2) What "gotchas" and "traps" is he talking about? It's hard to refute a vague point. C does have a degree of freedom which makes it possible to shoot yourself in the foot, and C++ is worse in that respect, but if you just use it correctly then you're fine. I don't buy the idea that something is no good because it's not very easy or takes some practice and knowledge.

3) No one said instruction count equals speed, and as I've already said modern C compilers emit more robust assembly than a 1:1 mapping would (a feature you can turn on/off in VS Pro). People still write assembly by hand today because of its speed. What he's saying simply isn't true. Too many benchmarks and performance tests contradict his opinion. Managed languages can sometimes be faster and usually are more efficient, but we still have a ways to go before native code is useless.



1) C is not garbage collected which prevents it from being efficient or fast in an actual sense. It is only efficient in the potential sense, that if you are a great *human computer* then you may be able to manage to make C work well.


An "actual sense"? If an "actual sense" means in theory, then sure. I've seen (and written) C# code that will beat C and C++. And I've seen the opposite case be true, more often than not. The difference is getting smaller and making the use of unmanaged languages less justified, but not unjustified.



2) C is not clean because it has fourty years of historical baggage, that it has never recovered from. The language is also dangerous as it often results in buffer overflows and other problems.


This remark is open to debate and interpretation... and buffer overflows are programmer errors, not a problem with C. They can also occur in managed languages, even if it may be a bit less common.



2) I am an operating system designer, so yes I have worked for countless hours on creating OS's and that includes working on kernels and device drivers to some extent, probably not so much on kernels as they are another flawed concept of our capitalist-onset technological dark age.


What's your proposed solution to kernels then?



What you "believe" is contrary to the actual data. C is actually getting more popular, at least according to Tiobe:


What I believe is that C will eventually go the way of the dinosaurs. That chart actually supports the idea, as it shows C popularity in a technical downtrend. If that was a stock chart, I'd consider shorting the stock or buying put options against it.



C is here to stay, it is not going anywhere anytime soon. For an alternative source, langpop actually puts C as the most used programming language today in its normalised comparison.


I didn't say it would vanish overnight. Over the course of the years it will eventually fall out of favor though.



C can be efficient if you are already an efficient human computer yourself. However, some functional programming languages, like Lisp and Haskell have transparent optimisation, in that they can generate fast code for problem solving without explicit specification (as mentioned above by Erik Naggum).


That almost sounds like you're saying people aren't smart enough to use C effectively.



The products of Microshit are themselves utter shit, and the best they can do is give you a shitty looking blue screen:


A shitty looking blue screen that I never see because I never have any problems with my system.



Another thing is that those Microshit mother-fuckers have ruined the entire world wide web! The web could've been a great means of transmitting information across the world, but it isn't in large part because of what Microshit did with its idiot exploiter program.


You've still offered no explanation of this view...



The Windows UI is not based upon the principles of human cognition, and its core system is inefficient. These are things no human consumer wants, but they put up with it just as they put up with the exploitation the capitalist system everyday.


Surely, you can do better than that?



There are also things like marketing and advertisements that make people think they want something, so what people really want really want rarely factors into the equation in capitalism. This too has been addressed by comrade Naggum:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/thread/caebf480c2640bb0/c2fd86a7e43ac7aa#c2fd86a7e43ac7aa


Again, "comrade Naggum" is just a flamer and extremist. It's his way or you can die. His rants are the worst example of anti-Microsoftian drivel I've ever before witnessed.



As I mentioned before, Microsoft still dominates in one area: desktop computers. If you go to best buy, what do you see on every desktop PC? Windows.


Like I already said, people want Windows on their PC anyway, and most don't even know how to install an OS. People like me who want to set up their own machine don't buy computers at Best Buy. That's for the average consumer/user.



The only reason that challenge came to Microsoft is because of the struggle of non-profit institutions (the fsf) against the capiatlist criminal interests, not because the criminals themselves decided to accept progress.


IIRC, part of that was because of the anti-trust lawsuit. Ironically, it ended up benefiting Microsoft as Bill Gates acknowledges.



These days the capitalist system mainly thwarts progress and development, but through the long hard struggle against entrenched capitalist interests some progress manages to arise, but is that enough to offset the destruction and the depletion? Its hard to say. The world may actually be getting worse (rather then progressing over time) due to capitalism.


Yikes...



That is not the same thing as having *idiomatic* support for immutability or functional programming. This is covered by Rich Hickey:


I don't consider that necessary, and prefer to explicitly implement immutability and accessibility.



Microsoft exerts considerable control over C# and it benefits from it, which means C# will end up serving some of Microsoft's malevolent interests no matter what.


If their interests here are so malevolent, let them fire more malice my way. :)



Microsoft developed C# not to create a great technology, but rather to challenge the control of Java. C# was a direct copy of Java, and most of the good features in the language were added on later (like lambda expressions).

Yeah, exactly, when you rip off someone elses technology (Java) which happens to be crap anyways, then any good features that you have will need to be added on later (lambda expressions). There is still much to be done of course.


C# beats Java, hands down. They developed it because they didn't have a comparable language for a managed runtime. And yes, they wanted to gain marketshare. This is an example of competition working just as intended.



Imperiative programming is an intuitive thing. Lisp is an imperiative programming language. That doesn't have to contradict functional programming though, especially since functional programming lends considerable advantages towards concurrency.


What about OOP?



Lisp is actually not that well known and its age has nothing to do with that. Besides, as I have been mentioning, it is the fundamental features, of Lisp and the Lisp machines that are essential as they could vastly improve our productivity.


Lisp had its debut, and just didn't make it. No one had any reason to kill off Lisp, my friend, and 'crime' needs motive. You're underestimating how well-known it actually is. Maybe not commonly used, but it is indeed well-known in programmerland. I know many programmers who have (and some who still do) use Lisp. None of them are rushing people to go out and use it or bring back the Lisp machines. They consider it something fun to play with, but not much more. Very few have found it worth doing a serious project with. Why such apathy about some 'super secret' language, unfairly suppressed, that could change the world and revolutionize humanity?

C'mon, bro... I don't even understand what you think was the motive behind the anti-Lisp conspiracy and how they actually made it happen. I'm starting to feel like I'm arguing with someone over religion... they have faith that cannot be argued with because they'll never change their mind.



Right now the Western capitalist countries are mall economies. That is they are entirely focused on creating artificial scarcity and artificial demand. You can see this whenever you turn on your computer or go to a website: there is advertisments. Advertisments to create artificial demand to get you to buy things. Our best and brightest are literally employed in artificial jobs getting people to buy things, rather then in any productive role.


Yes, we sort of are becoming "mall economies". Advertisement does not create "artificial" demand though. We're doomed to going the way of the "mall market" until we get a lot of dumbasses out of seats of political power.



In our socialist economy, these artificial and destructive occupations will be eliminated and everyone will be employed on new technological projects like creating friendly AI, taking into consideration to lessons of the early AI pioneers, including those working on the Lisp machines. Furthermore, we will be able to create vast new technologies like nuclear fusion, molecular assemblers, nanofactories, interstellar spacecraft etc.


How would you respond to the criticism that you push socialist technocracy because that would potentially make you a very powerful person?



DRM does boost sales and profits, just in a *different sense* and it absolutely is profitable. The only challenges to DRM come outside the capitalist system from groups like the fsf that oppose capitalist decadence.


Can you explain how?



The only corruption I am fighting against is the capitalist profiteers. I only fight against the state because the state is a tool used by the capitalists. The capitalists are the true enemy and the source of government cronyism in the first place.


Actually, no... the government is the source of cronyism. They started exerting power over the market, because people in government think their world vision is the only way to "fix" the world. They began picking winners and losers, and attacking those who didn't work along the lines of their political agenda. Business had to compete for government favor to stay alive. After generations and generations of it, it has become a norm for much of the corporate world. The capitalists are merely a tool of government now.



If you do get around to it, it would be nice to be able to develop the Lisp machines, if not I can wait a century or so until the human race socially progress to world socialism. That will allow us to have friendly AI (an early version being what Lispers developed), nuclear fusion, space based solar power, advanced automation, molecular assemblers, etc. Unfortunately, I don't see this happening under capitalism as people aren't put into their most productive occupations or put to develop technology.

Even though it is well known what technological solutions we should implement (many of them seen in the Lisp machines, but also in other systems like Sprite OS) there is nobody fucking doing it. Its frustrating because I love technology and our social forces are contradicting that.


Let's start writing a managed OS then. We'll implement our own Common Language System (in software) that runs C#, Lisp, etc for proof of concept.



Well as you said before we don't really live in a free market system

Since libertarian capitalism is a pipe dream, nobody has really lived in a truly free market system.


You call libertarian capitalism a pipe dream when you advocate one of the most farfetched political ideologies out there? :)

"Libertarian capitalism" wouldn't be difficult at all to implement. We basically have to shut down some government agencies, repeal some laws and write a few new ones to limit state powers and protect individual liberties.



You keep saying "if it were true" without giving any evidence as to why it isn't true. Its true, the Lisp machines had incredible advantages like single address space orthogonal persistence that have been lost.


You've given no evidence as to how it is true...



On the contrary, there isn't an adequate effort being put into alternative energies, in part because those existing capitalist interests don't want to see technologies that threaten their share of capital. When socialism comes along we will have a Kardashev-1 society with new energy technologies like nuclear fusion and a global energy network, because socialism vastly improves our productivity.


"Green energy", like I said, has become a "holy grail" sort of thing. Everyone wants to find the winning technology, and it is actively being sought with enthusiasm.



Capitalism has always been a system tied up with the state. It has never happened otherwise, like libertarian capitalists apparently envision.


Socialism and communism has always been too... I must say again, capitalism isn't even a "system" in actuality. We could care less that one can own private property when we live in a pseudo-socialist, statist society with a crony market.

In early America, we had a far healthier market but a sick society (e.g., slavery, racism, child labor). We fixed most of our major problems in society, but then we started dismantling our own market economy. To make matters worse, we got caried away with social progress at the cost of liberty. We've been electing the wrong people and begging to get screwed for too long... so we have no one to blame but ourselves. I am encouraged by the fact that we're gaining tremendous traction now, and may not be far off from actually achieving something for the first time in God knows how long.



No it doesn't, which is demonstrated by things like artificial scarcity, not to mention the many imperialist endeavours that capitalists are undertaking, like our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc, because war is very profitable!


When have I ever supported these wars? We don't want them.

Militarism and imperialism aren't a communism vs capitalism issue. They are their own ideologies, the proponents of which are authoritarian douche bags. People supported these wars because they think it's their right to be the world's police force. They genuinely believe they are "pushing freedom around the globe" or, most laughably, "exporting democracy".



So the truth is capitalism encourages people to be destructive it encourages violence, war, imperialism, destruction, etc. Not to mention the humongous amounts of waste the system produces. Just for a second abandon the propaganda that has been fed to you and consider this.


Nay... IIRC, some of your comrades are under the impression that WWII (and other wars) saved the US economy from the Great Depression? They claimed, with the dislogic of the Broken Window Fallacy, that these things are economic net gains and not a waste. I'm glad you have better sense.

Capitalism doesn't encourage anyone to be destructive. Blowing up a building doesn't put money in my pocket. War is a big waste of money, resources and life. War is also a function of the state, not the market.



Capitalism is based upon production for profit and profits occur when you can sell a scarce resource, so yes capitalism is scarcity based which is why we have artificial scarcity and planned obsolescence.

Artificial scarcity
Planned obsolescence


This article has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality. Discussion of this nomination can be found on the talk page.

Hmmm....

This is a total misexplanation of "capitalism", which again is not the system you're talking about but a part of it.



How do people without weapons kill each other exactly? With their bare hands lol? Humans are weak and flimsly animals by nature, so naturally they are peaceful and vegans as well. The idea that we are "hunters" or "violent creatures" is nonsensical.


If you want to kill someone, you can kill them with a stick, pencil, rope, anything. And yes, your bare hands, feet, knees, elbows all make great weapons too. If you knock a man to the ground and stomp on his neck and head a few times, you get the job done.

This idea that we're "peaceful vegans" is not fitting of someone with your level of intelligence. Human evolution was made possible by eating meat. A large and complex brain requires high levels of protein.

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/6-14-1999a.html

Yes, human beings are indeed hunters and not vegans... and saying we're not violent is absurd.



Who the fuck said anything about sharing toys? We are going to share the means of production. Personal property like toys have absolutely nothing to do with it. Also, let me remind you there is nothing natural about the exclusive control of the means of production, that is something that arose in the last 12000 years after the elimination of the primitive communists.


Primitive communism = myth



No. Our desires are what drive things, and are desires are largely determined by evolution. It may not always be personally beneficial to sexually reproduce (could lead to a STD) but people do it anyways to pass on the species. So the interests of the group often outweigh self-interest.


Surely you can do better than that too?



The cooperative social model has been used many times in the past and it has been proven not only to work but also to be superior. There are thousands of examples:

Paris Commune
Anarchist Catalonia
Red Corridor

I voiced my criticisms and praises of these before. If necessary, I can do so again. You'll notice though that none of these can be found on a map today. ;-)

[Rafiq]

This is starting to look like a Rosa Lichtenstein thread.

[Revolution starts with U]

No... there would then be a lot of conversation on the nature of language and the futiltiy of trying to describe the world in philisophical terms.
We need more Rosa threads.

[CommunityBeliever]

Actually, this is a pretty good time to end this discussion, because kapitalyst's post consists of a collection of short responses to quotes, that individually don't have any substance and mainly consist of "no no no." For example:

Drivel


Primitive communism = myth
I voiced my criticisms and praises of these before.
Again, "comrade Naggum" is just a flamer and extremist.
Lisp had its debut, and just didn't make it.
I must say again, capitalism isn't even a "system" in actuality.
This is a total misexplanation
You've given no evidence as to how it is true...
you advocate one of the most farfetched political ideologies
you push socialist technocracy because that would potentially make you a very powerful personGarbage Collection
Garbage collection is an essential feature in modern computing systems. Since I know you love hearing from Erik Naggum, here is another good quote from him:

http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/[email protected]


most people are ill-informed about the issues of memory management in general and garbage collection in particular. as I hinted: it is a very complicated topic. e.g., people think that manual memory management is always faster than garbage collection, and on top of this think that C's malloc and free are time- and space-efficient. _none_ of this is true. it is no accident that none of the standard Unix programs use dynamic memory unless absolutely necessary, and instead are rife with arbitrary (small) limits. the arguments used against garbage collections today were probably used against dynamic memory as a whole not too long ago.

it is, however, very true that the acceptance of Lisp was hindered by a particular brand of ill-informed misunderstanding, namely prejudice towards automating one particular complex manual task. for some bizarre reason, programmers have been taught to automate complex manual tasks and have consistently made them several orders of magnitude faster, but memory management is somehow exempt from this rule. why? of course, it isn't, but automatic storage reclamation was perceived as wasteful ("what? there are _dead_ objects out there, wasting _expensive_ memory?"), time-consuming (it is actually much faster to pause infrequently (perhaps never) to do garbage collection than to slow down the program all through its lifetime with part-time garbage collection, but most people care about small and immediate things, not big issues), even unnecessary ("relax, I can handle this. besides, I know better what my program needs than some newfangled automatic algorithm ever could."). some programmers also feel an acute lack of control, and will argue about everything but their actual reasons for not automating their memory management, preferring to micromanage individual bytes instead of managing memory.

so your AI research supporter (?) was not ill-informed, but what he told you was not what you thought you heard. garbage collection hindered the acceptance, but garbage collection was not at fault, the _perception_ of garbage collection was the actual cause. lack of understanding of what it was made for a scape goat and an easy excuse. also, popularity and lack of it are both self-propelling. (how often have you heard that somebody
doesn't want to learn Lisp because nobody uses it? that's why!)

Explanations

If you have any questions that you would like to ask to further understand how our new mode of production is superior to the capitalist mode of production, then I will be glad to answer them.


Where did I say these were concrete things? Nowhere. However, what you were wondering is why a space of "low level programming" is a flawed concept, and that is because it neglects the *continuous* reality of abstraction levels. In the Lisp machines there was no "low level programming languages" like C because that is a flawed concept.


What exactly is happiness, in the concrete sense?Happiness is a mental state in emotion machines.


What "gotchas" and "traps" is he talking about?Here is a pretty good source about gotchas and other elements behind the suckiness of C, and I have also added extra links:

C sucks (http://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks#C_Sucks_because:)
JavaScript sucks (http://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks#JavaScript_sucks_because:)
C# sucks (http://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks#C.23_sucks_because:)


An "actual sense"? I am essentially referring to implicitness (actuality) rather then explicitness (potentiality).


Surely, you can do better than that?Indeed you can (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy).


When have I ever supported these wars? We don't want them.

Militarism and imperialism aren't a communism vs capitalism issue. They are their own ideologies, the proponents of which are authoritarian douche bags. People supported these wars because they think it's their right to be the world's police force. They genuinely believe they are "pushing freedom around the globe" or, most laughably, "exporting democracy".You never said you support these wars, however, you generally support profiteering, of which war is one form, and before you say "no no no no" please at least read this book

War is a racket (http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm)


I fail to see how stdio.h and stdlib.h are a problem. They simply encapsulate CSL logic into two static libraries, which are used together with ease.They are based upon the non-GC MASOS model.


C'mon, bro... I don't even understand what you think was the motive behind the anti-Lisp conspiracy and how they actually made it happen. I'm starting to feel like I'm arguing with someone over religion... they have faith that cannot be argued with because they'll never change their mind.Actually, you aren't beginning to argue with me about Lisp as you haven't mentioned any technical points about the Lisp machines themselves, you have mainly being attempting to defend horrific programming languages like C/C++ as well as Microsoft and their deficient C#/CLI system.

Furthermore, as I have mentioned over and over again there is no "anti-Lisp conspiracy" what there is a deficient social organisation: capitalism. Everyone who uses a modern computer system and experiences proprietary software and DRM malware is intimately aware of just how deficient capitalism has been at developing our information technology.


The best reason not to use GC is because you don't want to -- plain and simple. Plenty programmers are smart enough to manage their own memory allocations/de-allocations and work with addresses. Sometimes programmers want to implement their own systems and memory management bottom-up. IMHO, that's their business and they have to deal with it.
The best reason not to use GC is because you don't want to -- plain and simple. Plenty programmers are smart enough to manage their own memory allocations/de-allocations and work with addresses. Sometimes programmers want to implement their own systems and memory management bottom-up. IMHO, that's their business and they have to deal with it.I believe you are generally misinformed about the garbage collection issue (which is expectable from someone within the deficient capitalist system). We should try to automate everything - including memory management - and this definitely entails having some people work on the memory management framework (which hopefully will be intertwined with the hardware), but that doesn't deter from the validity of GC.


I voiced my criticisms and praises of these before. If necessary, I can do so again. You'll notice though that none of these can be found on a map today. ;-) Actually, the red corridor is on a map today. Look it up. :)

Even today, there are plenty of revolutionary communist groups in the east, and since the West is going through a new dark ages / economic recession (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-2000s_financial_crisis), it seems social movements are picking up traction there too (see for example the europe protests or our occupy wall street movement), so well you may continue to be an apologist for the ruling classes, I maintain that socialism is going to pick up pace and arrive in the next century then humanity will be able to vastly improve its productivity and have nuclear fusion and friendly AI, among other things.

[CommunityBeliever]

Dear kapitalyst, please abandon all conceptions you have of an "anti-Lisp conspiracy." All there is, is immanently deficient computing platforms on the one hand Lisp platforms (like the Lisp machines) on the other. The Lisp systems offer many solutions to our current computing crisis. For example, the SCHEME-79 microprocessor was an incredibly elegant architecture:

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6334

So we have on one hand, totally shitty computing platforms like Windows that are based on artificial scarcity and DRM and on the other hand, we have many elegant solutions, but where is the effort to put these into practice? If you actually have several million dollars, then lets get to it, but if you don't I can understand that, because that is just a symptom of the lager reality of that capitalism mode of production which prioritises personal profit over then technological progress.

[Skooma Addict]

So did you guys initially meet on WOW or the Magic forums?

[nguyenmuabien]

Mark is a system of philosophical doctrine, history and political economy based on the works of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). From the files of three of his "capitalist" (Das Kapital) was published in 1895, the Marxist who tried to integrate the idea that in general a precise plan for the construction a social order socialism and / or communism.

Since that time has developed many tendencies influenced by various Marxist tendencies that each require their own is the successor of "the classics" and clearly define the boundaries with each other

[nguyenmuabien]

WOW or What is the Magic forums people

[Skooma Addict]

You are the missing link that the OI needed. Now we have it all.

[CommunityBeliever]

So did you guys initially meet on WOW or the Magic forums?Neither. We met here.

Our software industry (or rather are entire capitalist economy) totally sucks, and arguing about it here isn't going to make anything better. Well we had a relatively interesting discussion about this initially, now that its degraded to "no no no no" I am done.

[kapitalyst]

Actually, this is a pretty good time to end this discussion, because kapitalyst's post consists of a collection of short responses to quotes, that individually don't have any substance and mainly consist of "no no no." For example:


I knew you'd want to end the thread and drop any psychology discussion after the "peaceful vegan" comment. ;)

Actually, bro... you simply ignored most of everything I said in my last post. Yes, I used some one-liner responses to things that had been repeated over and over. I was also extremely tired from being up all night watching the futures market.



If you have any questions that you would like to ask to further understand how our new mode of production is superior to the capitalist mode of production, then I will be glad to answer them.


I'm still asking the question of what you believe the mechanism is for this "dark age"... and have yet been unable to obtain an answer other than "capitalist criminals" and such. I'm not trying to use the term in a pejorative sense, but it has all the elements of a conspiracy theory. I've been hoping you'd answer the challenge...



Happiness is a mental state in emotion machines.


So is anger. So happiness == anger according to this definition. You can't define happiness, you just have to know what it means. You could try, but you'll only use synonyms to the word.



Here is a pretty good source about gotchas and other elements behind the suckiness of C, and I have also added extra links:

C sucks (http://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks#C_Sucks_because:)
JavaScript sucks (http://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks#JavaScript_sucks_because:)
C# sucks (http://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks#C.23_sucks_because:)


Most of the criticisms leveled at these languages are aimed at libraries and APIs, and not the actual language. And if we want to play it this way, how about those great LISP APIs? Wait... what? :rolleyes:

Claim: "C sucks because..."


Manual memory management


This might make userland programming with C a bit more difficult, and make managed languages more appealing, but this is a major strength in unavoidable cases.



Manifest Typing


Computers worked with fixed-sized data in bytes. Sometimes, especially with manual memory management, it's absolutely essential to enforce explicit typing. What about developing an OS, and assigning the Global Descriptor Table? You trust a compiler to infer type? What does this become:

x = 0;

Is it type int, char, long, or?... This could pose serious problems.

How about this C++ example:

class A { A(int i); }
class B { B(int i); }

// implementations here...

var x(0);

It doesn't hurt my feeling to use:

A* x = new A(0);
B* y = new B(0);

That way it's clear, and I'm in control. No problems are going to be hidden over something simple.

There's a time and a place for type inference: compile time. Manifest typing encourages good program structure and consistency of type usage, and allows programmers to have tight control over what types are used. For runtime type specification, C#'s generics system is superior to anything out there -- even C++'s useful, but bulky, template system.



No support for concurrency or distributed programming


Duh, these are not language features... these are OS API features, all of which are available in C on any self-respecting OS...



No good way to manipulate strings.


Because there are no strings... A string is just an abstraction of a character array. And manipulating a character array is quite simple.



Terribly named functions: isalnum, fprintf, fscanf, etc.


Again, this has nothing to do with the language but the standard libraries. Yes, it is a bit cryptic. No, it's not that hard to learn what they do.



C is so terribly cryptic that it has obfuscated code contests.


Erm... so does LISP (don't you hate my using all caps for the name? ;))... This is so trivial and silly my initial response can only be a double-facepalm...



C supports 'goto'


Which is quite nice to have around sometimes, and IIRC part of Turing-completeness. Don't like it? Don't use it...



Macro


Yeah, how stupid to have a very useful feature that can let you customize the way you code and actually make things less cryptic...



There's a moment in every C++ programmer's life where he wonders why, why, switch case fall-through has been invented: it's completely useless, and if you forget a break you introduce a bug silently.


I don't like the fact that C# doesn't allow it. This is, yet again, another useful capability and flexibility. Why write a hundred if/else branches for say, processing OS messages, when you could have default responses to certain groups of them, for example?



if (a = b) // forgot an =; condition is true if b != 0


An = operator is for assignment. A == operator is for comparison. Learn the difference, and you'll be just fine. I enjoy this "loop hole" or whatever you want to call it.

if( x = createHandle( ... ) )

>

x = createHandle( ... );
if(x) ...

I would respond to the C++ criticisms, but they're just as lousy and I don't have the patience at the moment. Maybe later. On to C#...

Claims: "C# sucks because..."



Supports 'goto'


:rolleyes:



Two distinct sets of collections: non-generic and generic. Stack and Queue have the same name in both their generic and non-generic flavors, but then we have Hashtable (non-generic) and Dictionary (generic)


And this is a problem, why? :rolleyes:

If you need/want to use the explicitly typed versions, you just use them. If you want to use the generic ones:

Queue<string> q;

Shit, that was hard! :lol:


SortedList uses key-value pairs. There is no standard .NET collection for a list that keeps its items in sort order.


What is the point? This is another non-language "issue" with no explanation...



HashSet was not introduced until .NET 3.5, even though it had been around in Java for some time.


Yeah, criticisms of past versions of APIs are really worth taking into consideration... :rolleyes:


Parameters are not supported for most properties, only indexers, even though this is possible in Visual Basic .NET.


Because no one really cares or sees much merit in the idea. We use indexers if we care enough to go through the trouble.


I am essentially referring to implicitness (actuality) rather then explicitness (potentiality).


This has been clocked... C outruns LISP 99% of the time... LISP is considered a sluggish language, even slower than Java.




You never said you support these wars, however, you generally support profiteering, of which war is one form, and before you say "no no no no" please at least read this book

War is a racket (http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm)


I don't support "profiteering" -- generating profits through illegal or nefarious methods. If I make lemonade and sell it for a profit, I've done nothing wrong. And let's leave it at that...

War is a racket (e.g., LBJ, anyone?). Politicians and some businesses stand to profit from it, and that's something we need to do something about. We can, however, fix things like this without communism... no thanks... ;)



Actually, you aren't beginning to argue with me about Lisp as you haven't mentioned any technical points about the Lisp machines themselves, you have mainly being attempting to defend horrific programming languages like C/C++ as well as Microsoft and their deficient C#/CLI system.


I don't like to play "language crusader"... I think everyone should use what they like and work best with. But if you insist, ok... I'll just say what I feel about it... LISP sucks. You criticize C for being old? LISP is 15 years older (1958 vs 1973). You criticize the C++ standard for being long-winded? LISP's is actually longer. LISP was an unwieldy dinosaur that, while having a few redeeming features, was simply unsuitable for modern software development and inferior to its counterparts.

You criticize the standard C/C++ libraries? LISP has a bunch of incomplete, inconsistent ones that lack any coherent documentation (sometimes lacking any at all). The language itself has broken up into several "dialects". Individuals, open-source groups and several companies have tried to revive it and use it over the years. Almost everyone abandons it. Reddit, for example, threw away their LISP and rewrote everything in Python for these very reasons.

Lots of college students still learn LISP in the course of their computer science studies, and most absolutely loath it... needless to say, they never use it again and prefer other functional languages and imperative, OO languages. Today it mainly exists on the fringe of the software dev community, and is supported by groups of fanatics and extremists (no offense). People don't like it, but some LISPers want to make everyone use it. Some go so far as to believe that everyone is stupid except them, and that if people used LISP they wouldn't deserve to be executed (e.g., "comrade Naggum"). Why don't people like LISP?

Imperative, OOP is the most intuitive thing. Human beings naturally see "classes" of things all around them, and think about the relationships between them (structure). If you see a Golden Retriever, you think about the fact that is a derived type of Dog... Dogs can run, eat, sleep and do other things, and so can a retriever. But retrievers can Swim(), Fetch() and do some other unique things. We think of tasks as sets of logical steps taken to reach a goal. Imperative, OO languages are built upon this philosophy. We think of these as two different things: objects and what objects do. LISP totally throws away all of this logic to create a mind-bending array of parenthesis (yes, it's not just me who hates that). Code and data are not distinguished. There's no respect for type and classification. Everything is broken down into functions/expressions which require complex nesting. People often complain about having to work out how to code something on paper first, and then typing it in... just to do something a C-like language could do in a few simple statements. People find Lisp clunky, unnatural and displeasing... some find it downright revolting. And that's why no one cares about it. Example:



if (a == b)
c = !d;
else
c = d + b;
vs...



c = if(equals(a,b), not(d), plus(d,b))
I think even our non-programming members here might have an opinion about which one makes sense... :thumbup1:

LISP has far outlived its usefulness. LISPers did pioneer, long ago, so important features (e.g., garbage collection). Then again, cavemen pioneered the wheel but no one is desperately working to bring back their sense of fashion. We also acknowledge the contributions of those pioneers to AI programming. And some still use LISP today for that purpose. Why? It's mainly of a "status quo" thing. LISP was the historical language used in AI pioneering, so some nostalgia-driven people take a liking to it for that reason. Some professors also like to teach AI algorithms with old LISP examples, and AI programmers like to interface with old LISP code. There was, however, nothing really "special" about LISP that made it the choice for early AI pioneers. It was just "there", and it was better than many other languages at the time. Today, though, there's no reason to use it. Better, faster and more modernized and productive languages exist. LISP might be complicated, "mind-bending", "intellectually stimulating" or "enlightening", but it's simply a poor choice for developing software now. It's never going to make humanity more "productive" or be an instrument of political change. People just don't like it... And no inquisition from the clergy will make us convert.

Above all, LISP simply isn't as fast as native code or even other managed languages like C#. I don't care what comrade Naggum says, because his theory simply doesn't hold water. People have clocked it. When the modern PC came out, it blazed past the LISP machines of olde with superior performance at a superior price. That's why the LISP machine is relegated to the MIT Tech Museum...

There... I actually don't think LISP sucks, but if you wanted me to flame at it, then there you go. I think you should use what honestly works best for you and your project. For 99% of people, it simply ain't LISP and never will be. If you're a 1%'er, then you enjoy the hell out of LISP and show us what you're made of. We're not going to stop you, so have at it.



Actually, the red corridor is on a map today. Look it up. :)


I know, that was my trap and why I added a ;)... Let's see... Red Corridor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_corridor)...
The Red Corridor is a term used to describe an impoverished region in the east of India that experiences considerable Naxalite communist insurgency. These are also areas that suffer from the greatest illiteracy, poverty and overpopulation in modern India, and span parts of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal states.
Sounds like a wonderful place to live, eh comrade? I'm booking my plane ticket now. :lol:



Even today, there are plenty of revolutionary communist groups in the east, and since the West is going through a new dark ages / economic recession (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-2000s_financial_crisis), it seems social movements are picking up traction there too (see for example the europe protests or our occupy wall street movement), so well you may continue to be an apologist for the ruling classes, I maintain that socialism is going to pick up pace and arrive in the next century then humanity will be able to vastly improve its productivity and have nuclear fusion and friendly AI, among other things.

Sure, there are revolutionary communist groups in the east. There is also a large neo-Nazi movement. I don't idolize or support either of them. I hope you don't either...

If this is a "dark age", then let's make it even darker. Because I'm loving the modern technology.

Economic recession is a totally different matter, and I have to side with you. Yes, it's a very serious problem. However, it's a problem we warned everyone about before it ever happened. Policy-makers and central bankers, however, still want to hold onto fallacious beliefs, repeat their mistakes over and over and expect a different result. We don't claim to be able to totally eliminate recessions (no one can), but we sure as hell could end the boom-bust cycle western economies are trapped in and put us on a new, sustainable growth track. The last decade has been shitty, but nonetheless a great motivator to rally people back towards Commonsenseland.

I don't have an "apologist" view whatsoever. If you claimed marijuana makes peoples' heads explode and I refute it, that does not make me a "pot apologist" or advocate for its use. The "ruling class" is an elected (or so we're told) "aristocracy". They are who rules you, my friend. They will throw you in a prison cell for burning (no, merely possessing) that aforementioned plant... or engaging in sexual activity for which money changes hands. They have laws (and punishments) for not wearing a seat belt, because we're too stupid to look after ourselves (at least they say so). They can invade your home and privacy, and say fuck the laws that once meant something (at least to this country). They can borrow money and print more currency at your expense and financial peril, spend it on whatever the hell they want and keep it a secret and lie about it. They can create any agency they want to fuck with you and your life, and that has no oversight or accountability to voters. They can lock you behind bars on a mere suspicion, and in some places, put you to death without conclusive evidence to your guilt. They can throw you in jail without charge and hold you there "indefinitely" -- until they figure out what you allegedly did. They can do anything they want nowadays, and you're just fucked. Make no mistake about who the "ruling class" is.

The Europe protests are mainly concerned with their stupid government, and the things they've done to fuck their own people. That's precisely what has happened here too, so my criticism of Occupy Wall Street is that they're in the wrong place... besides, it's a silly metaphor. You'll also notice a lot of the people there are clueless about what's going on in Washington D.C., and don't know a damn thing about Wall Street or the financial world. Some of them, however, have the right idea. Just saw one with an "End the Fed" sign. :thumbup1:

[Revolution starts with U]

Wait wait wait... no no no.. if I could wear Utzi's Boots and get away with it, I would in a second :tt2:

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1978.htm

Oh, and also "yeah, everything was fine before the FED.../sarcasm" The FED is a symptom, the cause is capitalism. If you think politicians are the ones really writing the laws, you are very naive.

[CommunityBeliever]

Dear kapitalyst, I am sorry for writing some things like "C# sucks" which could be seen as flaming, but I also noticed many of your posts aren't much better in that regard. Nonetheless, I will reply to your post and split this thread into two parts (one social and one technological) tomorrow.

[kapitalyst]

Wait wait wait... no no no.. if I could wear Utzi's Boots and get away with it, I would in a second :tt2:

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1978.htm

Oh, and also "yeah, everything was fine before the FED.../sarcasm" The FED is a symptom, the cause is capitalism. If you think politicians are the ones really writing the laws, you are very naive.

Yep, the cause of everything is capitalism. It's what moves the stars in the heavens, and smites down the proletariat with mighty bolts of lighting. :lol:

The Fed is actually a perfect way to abolish money/currency and destroy free enterprise. If you want to have a peaceful socialist revolution, you'd need the Fed and central banking. You have to control the issuance and acquisition of monetary wealth. The Fed is no more a "symptom" of capitalism as than whooping cough is a symptom of eating granola bars. Capitalism, private ownership, is not a system or mechanism... simply a feature.

I know exactly who's writing laws, and it is politicians. Do some corporations have influence over it? Of course. The question is, why? It's rather simple. Politics naturally attracts people who like power and believe the masses are simple sheep needing a shepherd... people who want control over everything, and to tell you how to live. How do they get there? They need money and support. They turn to individuals, other politicians, unions, businesses, etc. When they get in office, they return favors to their loyalist supporters. What's a few immoral acts between friends? (Power + politician) = :tt1:... I added the parenthesis in honor of CommunityBeliever (kidding!)! :lol:

How do we fix this? Definitely not with communism... again, no thanks... We simply have to strip government of autonomy and power. We, the citizens, are supposed to be government's overseers and the ultimate enforcers. And if we can ever get to a point where a stable anarchy is possible, I won't shed a single tear over government. Most regulatory agencies, especially those subject to outside manipulation, should be abolished. Some, like Wildlife and Fisheries, should be kept for now. The Fed should certainly be abolished... one of the sources of corruption in the government and financial industry. The FDA, for instance, is just a totally unnecessary agency that is a vehicle for politicians to abuse citizens and drug companies to have some control competition. This is, due to the size, power and scope of government, a complex topic. But the general idea is that we only need some commonsense, non-invasive laws, basic law enforcement and a healthy legal system that anyone can access. Communism? No... I'm not yielding liberty and opening the door to people who want to exploit the institution of government for complete totalitarianism.

http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/5835/michaelmooretshirt.jpg

[RGacky3]

And if we can ever get to a point where a stable anarchy is possible, I won't shed a single tear over government.

If that happens say good bye to Capitalism because capitalism depends on the state.


No... I'm not yielding liberty and opening the door to people who want to exploit the institution of government for complete totalitarianism.


No one is talking about yielding liberty, its about having workers control over hte means of production, thas liberty for workers that they don't have now.


The Fed should certainly be abolished... one of the sources of corruption in the government and financial industry.

Yeah because Capitalism was great for everyone before the Fed, and private banks will just be fine and act nicely after the Fed.

Socialized the Fed.


The Fed is no more a "symptom" of capitalism as than whooping cough is a symptom of eating granola bars. Capitalism, private ownership, is not a system or mechanism... simply a feature.


No its a system, capitalism is a ownership, production and distribution system, The Fed, corporatism and so on are all natural outocmes of capitalism, as power centralizes hte powerful will create institutions of power to protect them.

What you would have to is just hand those instiutions 100% over to the powerful and get rid of any democratic oversight, or any democratic process, see your not againts power, your against democracy.

[Revolution starts with U]

Yep, the cause of everything is capitalism. It's what moves the stars in the heavens, and smites down the proletariat with mighty bolts of lighting. :lol:

No amount of dishonesty can bring forth the truth, friend.


The Fed is actually a perfect way to abolish money/currency and destroy free enterprise. If you want to have a peaceful socialist revolution, you'd need the Fed and central banking. You have to control the issuance and acquisition of monetary wealth. The Fed is no more a "symptom" of capitalism as than whooping cough is a symptom of eating granola bars. Capitalism, private ownership, is not a system or mechanism... simply a feature.

You don't wonder why the modern banking in general, and central banking specifically arose in tandem with the capitalist mode of production? You don't wonder why it was the banks and the capitalists that they financed that wanted and instituted the central banks?
I know I wonder why you can say obviously contradictory things like "banks are a great way to abolish money." But hey, fallacy is a way of life that I accept and love, for those who remain unenlightened.


I know exactly who's writing laws, and it is politicians. Do some corporations have influence over it? Of course. The question is, why? It's rather simple. Politics naturally attracts people who like power and believe the masses are simple sheep needing a shepherd... people who want control over everything, and to tell you how to live. How do they get there? They need money and support. They turn to individuals, other politicians, unions, businesses, etc. When they get in office, they return favors to their loyalist supporters. What's a few immoral acts between friends? (Power + politician) = :tt1:... I added the parenthesis in honor of CommunityBeliever (kidding!)! :lol:

And yet you continue to support a system that gives them the means to act upon that lust for power? How would it not be better for all were the board elected and the business model voted upon?

How do we fix this? Definitely not with communism... again, no thanks... We simply have to strip government of autonomy and power. We, the citizens, are supposed to be government's overseers and the ultimate enforcers.
You don't think PDAs will continue to exercise the same powers that the state has? You don't think Blackwater will find some trumped up charge against Iraq or whomever in order to invade and expropriate their resources? Oh, but how will they get investment? By misguided people with a lot of money who want cheap gas and don't care who had to die to bring it to them... especially if they offend some collectivist principle he holds dear.
You're talking about taking away the one thing that is based off 1 man 1 vote and replacing it with 1 man ulimited votes, another man no votes at all. I am talking about extending 1 man 1 vote to the means of value creation.

And if we can ever get to a point where a stable anarchy is possible, I won't shed a single tear over government. Most regulatory agencies, especially those subject to outside manipulation, should be abolished.
I couldn't agree more.


Communism? No... I'm not yielding liberty and opening the door to people who want to exploit the institution of government for complete totalitarianism.

Still stuck in the "the USSR was socialism" paradigm, eh? that's fine. I don't care if you call it socialism, it's not what I support. Call it lovingism if you must, but I am on the side of economic self-determination, and am wondering what is holding you back?

(PS: that filmmaker has been very successful at tapping into that inherint contradiction in capitalism we have been talking about)

Much love, brother

[kapitalyst]

If that happens say good bye to Capitalism because capitalism depends on the state.

Sorry, that's complete BS. Free enterprise and government are foes. I can get along just fine without them.



No one is talking about yielding liberty, its about having workers control over hte means of production, thas liberty for workers that they don't have now.


Unfortunately, "public ownership" is a myth. If everyone were literally able to own something, then no one actually owns it. And in the absence of ownership, someone will figure out a way to dominate. Typically, that will be the state. They have big guns and soldiers... so long to liberty and competition...



Yeah because Capitalism was great for everyone before the Fed, and private banks will just be fine and act nicely after the Fed.


No one said it was "great for everyone" before the Fed. Free enterprise progressively makes things better for everyone.



No its a system, capitalism is a ownership, production and distribution system, The Fed, corporatism and so on are all natural outocmes of capitalism, as power centralizes hte powerful will create institutions of power to protect them.


This is a very poor argument, sorry... We can make all of this bullshit illegal and limit government without communism.



What you would have to is just hand those instiutions 100% over to the powerful and get rid of any democratic oversight, or any democratic process, see your not againts power, your against democracy.

I'm not even sure what you're trying to say... In free enterprise, no one can have 100% power. Only a government can have 100% power... they can kill you, and the law just doesn't apply. If a business becomes very large and powerful, I'll just seize the opportunity to undercut them and beat them -- deliver a superior product and price to consumers. Then you'll see they hardly had any power... just a temporary position they enjoyed. As long as no law or institution bars me from participating in the market, I have economic liberty.

[RGacky3]

Sorry, that's complete BS. Free enterprise and government are foes. I can get along just fine without them.


A, your a stock trader, what would the stock market be without regulations and property protections.

B, Free enterprise and govermnet are foes??? Are you kidding me? the govenrment is owned by free enterprise, hell Capitalism is a state institution, property laws, encorporation, access to resouces and so on, all by the state.


Unfortunately, "public ownership" is a myth. If everyone were literally able to own something, then no one actually owns it. And in the absence of ownership, someone will figure out a way to dominate. Typically, that will be the state. They have big guns and soldiers... so long to liberty and competition...


If the state is democratically controlled then it IS public ownership.


No one said it was "great for everyone" before the Fed. Free enterprise progressively makes things better for everyone.


Well not anymore.


This is a very poor argument, sorry... We can make all of this bullshit illegal and limit government without communism.


And Corporations won't make their own institutions to do what government did for them? Only this time without any democratic oversight? Common ...


I'm not even sure what you're trying to say... In free enterprise, no one can have 100% power.

Why not? Ever hear of the Pullman strike? IT was a town basically run by one corporation.


If a business becomes very large and powerful, I'll just seize the opportunity to undercut them and beat them -- deliver a superior product and price to consumers.

Ahh yes, the free market utopia, unfortunately for you we are talking about the real world here, I have facts, statistics and real world empirical evidence to back me up, you have myuthical utopian stories about the free market.


Then you'll see they hardly had any power... just a temporary position they enjoyed. As long as no law or institution bars me from participating in the market, I have economic liberty.

The instiuttion is called capitalism, and in capitalism economic liberty is for sale, hell ALL liberty is for sale.

Why are you so afraid of democracy?

[CommunityBeliever]

I knew you'd want to end the thread and drop any psychology discussion after the "peaceful vegan" comment.Here is what I am going to do:

1) Break off all technological (computational) discussion into a separate thread I will create in the future.

2) Continue to discuss the social elements here with assistance from comrades like Revolution Starts with U.


They can do anything they want nowadays, and you're just fucked. Make no mistake about who the "ruling class" is.Who do you think I am? I am an hardcore communist so of course I am familar with the ruling class.


We can, however, fix things like this without communism... no thanks...1) Why shouldn't the people control the means of production? What is your objection to worker's democracy (communism)?

2) What is your proposed solution? Libertarian capitalism?


I must say again, capitalism isn't even a "system" in actuality.When you are on this site please use our accepted definitions, otherwise go somewhere else.


I'm still asking the question of what you believe the mechanism is for this "dark age"... and have yet been unable to obtain an answer other than "capitalist criminals" and such. I'm not trying to use the term in a pejorative sense, but it has all the elements of a conspiracy theory. I've been hoping you'd answer the challenge...The basic basis of this dark age is that the Western capitalist countries have became a mall economy based upon artificial occupations rather productive ones, in addition to destructive imperialist endeavours around the world, e.g Iraq. I have actually described this before:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=6357

1). The first point of failure, is the supply and demand roots of the capitalist price system.

If there is an abundant supply of something, then capitalism adapts by creating artificial scarcity. This can see in any digital industry, with things like copyrights and patents. In long-lasting products, capitalists create planned obsolescence so that they won't last that long, forcing the consumer to rebuy.

On the other side is this system is artificial demand. Everyone in the first world is intimately familiar with this through the advertisements, which took up at least $500 billion dollars last years. Advertisements create artificial demand in consumers for products that they don't particularly want or need.

2). The second point of failure is the wasteful overlap that occurs from reinventing the wheel. This occurs in part due to the privatisation of research information, such as with proprietary software, but also in large part due to a lack of social organisation. A huge amount of reinventing happens in the open source world, because they lack organisation.

3). The third point of failure is network effect which arises from social inertia. Existing organisations don't want new technologies to arise that will eliminate their existence. For example, oil companies don't want their oil assets to be devalued by widely available energy alternatives like nuclear fusion, so they may reduce development in that area.

4). The fourth point of failure is the focus on short term profit rather then long term benefit and sustainability. For example, capitalists over-exploit renewable resources, such as fish stocks and forests.

5). The fifth and final point of failure is disinterestedness. Capitalists can just be disinterested in important research which results from, for example, a lack of R&D funds.


If this is a "dark age", then let's make it even darker. Because I'm loving the modern technology.That doesn't make any sense. If you love technology you should strive for a golden age of technological development - not a dark age.


How would you respond to the criticism that you push socialist technocracy because that would potentially make you a very powerful person?I will respond that I push anarcho-communist technocracy because I believe it will allow us to vastly improve our technological development and it will create social harmony.

Psychology
Humans are peaceful and social animals despite what bourgeoisie ideology - i.e Judaism and Judeo-Christainty - state about that.


If you want to kill someone, you can kill them with a stick, pencil, rope, anything. And yes, your bare hands, feet, knees, elbows all make great weapons too. If you knock a man to the ground and stomp on his neck and head a few times, you get the job done.1) Killing someone with your bare hands, feet, knees, elbows, etc can be incredibly hard work, especially if that person tries to run, them you will have to chase them down in a persistence hunt.

2) In order to go through such an incredbile effort the person must be desperate. And what makes such a person desparate? Nothing less then the scarcity of fundamental resources such as food, water, health care, etc - which are things the capitalists have failed to effectively provide throughout history which is why the state has came into to do it (universal health care systems, e.g Cuba).

Libertarian capitalism
Libertarian capitalism has never occurred throughout history. The capitalists have always been intertwined with the state.


I don't support "profiteering" -- generating profits through illegal or nefarious methods. If I make lemonade and sell it for a profit, I've done nothing wrong. And let's leave it at that...So you think there should be a state to stop profiteering from spiraling out of control? But how is that at all compatible with capitalism? If there is a group of 1% of the population (the capitalists) that control the economy how are they not going to also control the state and using it for their means?


Yes, we sort of are becoming "mall economies". Advertisement does not create "artificial" demand though. We're doomed to going the way of the "mall market" until we get a lot of dumbasses out of seats of political power.How is "getting a lot of dumbasses" out of seats of political power going to fundamentally change the working of the economy?


Actually, no... the government is the source of cronyism. They started exerting power over the market, because people in government think their world vision is the only way to "fix" the world. They began picking winners and losers, and attacking those who didn't work along the lines of their political agenda. Business had to compete for government favor to stay alive. After generations and generations of it, it has become a norm for much of the corporate world. The capitalists are merely a tool of government now.How are "capitalists a tool of government"? That really doesn't make sense to me. The government clearly functions to serve the interests of the capitalists, for example, if you want to rob a bank that holds the capitalist's wealth, the state will run across the country (or the world via interpol) to find you and punish you.

The state is a tool of the capitalists that serves to protect them, including in cases of economic crisis, through bailouts, as I think we are all intimately aware now. It has never occured in any other way. Where has libertarian capitalism ever happened in real life then?

World revolution
There are vibrant communist movements in the East, and now that the West is going through a global economic recession / new dark age (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-2000s_financial_crisis), we are seeing social movements there too. In my opinion, this will eventually combine to create world socialism within the next hundred years.


Sounds like a wonderful place to live, eh comrade? I'm booking my plane ticket now.Welcome to capitalism. Nowhere in capitalism is a wonderful place to live as the vast majority of people (the workers) are treated poorly by the capitalist elites.

But the communists around the world have been managing to make things much better for the working class by providing services to the people. The red corridor is an incredible example of this, there are a group of some of the world's poorest people - rejected by the capitalist plutocracy - and now the Maoist rebels are helping them out.

In fact, throughout history Socialists have been working to make the world a much better place to live by fighting for basic rights like a minimum wage.


The Europe protests are mainly concerned with their stupid government, and the things they've done to fuck their own people. That's precisely what has happened here too, so my criticism of Occupy Wall Street is that they're in the wrong place... besides, it's a silly metaphor. You'll also notice a lot of the people there are clueless about what's going on in Washington D.C., and don't know a damn thing about Wall Street or the financial world. Some of them, however, have the right idea. Just saw one with an "End the Fed" sign.This is a good start. Around the world people are waking up and realising that the majority of people should be able to control things and not just the top 1% (aka the capitalists)

But there are still many people (such as you) who apparently think that the people shouldn't control the economy and that right should instead be given the 1% of capitalists.


Sure, there are revolutionary communist groups in the east. There is also a large neo-Nazi movement. I don't idolize or support either of them. I hope you don't either...Our eastern comrades are *leftists* who are working to give control of society back to the people which is the antithesis of right-wing ideologies of authoritarianism and elitism such as Nazism and capitalism.

[kapitalyst]

No amount of dishonesty can bring forth the truth, friend.




You don't wonder why the modern banking in general, and central banking specifically arose in tandem with the capitalist mode of production? You don't wonder why it was the banks and the capitalists that they financed that wanted and instituted the central banks?
I know I wonder why you can say obviously contradictory things like "banks are a great way to abolish money." But hey, fallacy is a way of life that I accept and love, for those who remain unenlightened.


A textbook example of contextomy... chop my quote into a piece that makes it possible to distort the meaning. "But hey, fallacy is a way of life that I accept and love..." - RSWU ;)



And yet you continue to support a system that gives them the means to act upon that lust for power? How would it not be better for all were the board elected and the business model voted upon?


The board of directors typically is elected...

Why do you continue to support a system that has proven more elusive than the fountain of youth and has been twisted into oppressive regimes that throw people into concentration camps and murder on a grand scale? :tt2:



You don't think PDAs will continue to exercise the same powers that the state has? You don't think Blackwater will find some trumped up charge against Iraq or whomever in order to invade and expropriate their resources? Oh, but how will they get investment? By misguided people with a lot of money who want cheap gas and don't care who had to die to bring it to them... especially if they offend some collectivist principle he holds dear.
You're talking about taking away the one thing that is based off 1 man 1 vote and replacing it with 1 man ulimited votes, another man no votes at all. I am talking about extending 1 man 1 vote to the means of value creation.


What does Blackwater have to do with anything? I don't support Blackwater, nor do I think they should have the authority to invade anyone.



Still stuck in the "the USSR was socialism" paradigm, eh? that's fine. I don't care if you call it socialism, it's not what I support. Call it lovingism if you must, but I am on the side of economic self-determination, and am wondering what is holding you back?

(PS: that filmmaker has been very successful at tapping into that inherint contradiction in capitalism we have been talking about)

Much love, brother

No, the USSR was not socialism... true socialism does not exist. The USSR is just an example of where the pursuit of it takes us.

"Lovingism" simply isn't ever going to come to fruition. You admit people are greedy and ambitious when arguing against capitalism, but then you think we're all going to follow this beautiful system and trust to hope that it isn't turned against it. How do you support economic self-determination?

That fat filmmaker also believes 9/11 was plotted by George Bush... Just take a look at who the majority of his fans are. :thumbdown:

[CommunityBeliever]

How do we fix this? Definitely not with communism... again, no thanks...

Why not? Is it just because of your personal interests (ie your own possesion of capital)? You haven't said anything so far to indicate what your objection to communism is.


No... I'm not yielding liberty and opening the door to people who want to exploit the institution of government for complete totalitarianism.

The only "liberty" you will lose in communism is the liberty to exploit the proletariat. In capitalist discourse words like "democracy" and "liberty" must considered in terms of the bourgeoisie. In communism it is the vast majority of people that will have control and that will have liberty.

[kapitalyst]

A, your a stock trader, what would the stock market be without regulations and property protections.

B, Free enterprise and govermnet are foes??? Are you kidding me? the govenrment is owned by free enterprise, hell Capitalism is a state institution, property laws, encorporation, access to resouces and so on, all by the state.


A) The stock market would be a hell of a lot more open and enjoyable without over-regulation. Can you honestly sit there and defend something like Exchange Rule 431 (aka "PDT Rule")? :rolleyes:

As I've already said, I'm not an anarchist (though I could be converted someday -- when its feasibility is obvious). There is a need for laws against things like murder, theft and fraud. Little more is necessary. "Property protections" are to prevent things like jackasses vandalizing and burning down my house, stealing my car or wiping out my checking account. You support those things?

B) By definition, if government were owned by business (or vice-versa), that is not free enterprise. And business does not own government. Only a few corporations have influence in the government because we've abandoned constitutional restraints, we've voted to be fucked and have created a cronyist system... One that you seem to support, by your continued arguments for bullshit regulatory agencies and bullshit regulations.



And Corporations won't make their own institutions to do what government did for them? Only this time without any democratic oversight? Common ...


THERE IS NO "DEMOCRATIC OVERSIGHT"...

What institutions? What do you think they'd do? I can't argue against a ghost...



Why not? Ever hear of the Pullman strike? IT was a town basically run by one corporation.


If I build a town on my land, I might have a considerable degree of control over the town, but I don't have 100% control over the economy or the government. I'd also go to prison if I killed anyone or built a mini-Berlin wall to keep everyone in. So not sure what you're getting at...



Ahh yes, the free market utopia, unfortunately for you we are talking about the real world here, I have facts, statistics and real world empirical evidence to back me up, you have myuthical utopian stories about the free market.


Hmmm... I've been called a "utopian" by leftists, who believe if we followed their ideas the world would revolve around peace, love and harmony... :rolleyes:

You've failed to show any of this "empirical evidence"... and facts and statistics aren't necessarily true. You've only shown some propaganda, and some highly misleading charts without citing any reliable sources. I could make the same things in Photoshop. I also thoroughly debunked everything you've yet posted. And maybe most amusing was the fact that your data rarely supported the conclusions you drew from it, and in fact often contradicted them.



The instiuttion is called capitalism, and in capitalism economic liberty is for sale, hell ALL liberty is for sale.

Why are you so afraid of democracy?

:confused:

On the contrary, I think you should fear democracy. Run for political office and see if you have a fighting chance... better yet, openly acknowledge the fact that you're a socialist.

[CommunityBeliever]

Little more is necessary. "Property protections" are to prevent things like jackasses vandalizing and burning down my house, stealing my car or wiping out my checking account. You support those things?

You apparently still don't understand basic Marxism. We support the worker's control of the means of production not of personal property, e.g cars. As such, we don't particularly support car theft.


On the contrary, I think you should fear democracy. Run for political office and see if you have a fighting chance... better yet, openly acknowledge the fact that you're a socialist.

Marxists distinguish between bourgeoisie democracy and actual democracy.

[RGacky3]

On the contrary, I think you should fear democracy. Run for political office and see if you have a fighting chance... better yet, openly acknowledge the fact that you're a socialist.

We don't live in a Democracy in the United States.


"Property protections" are to prevent things like jackasses vandalizing and burning down my house, stealing my car or wiping out my checking account. You support those things?


You don't need capitalist property laws to protect people from vandalizing and buring down your house.

You need them to give a corporaion ownership over a large swath of land and mines and to prevent workers form having a say over what they produce.


A) The stock market would be a hell of a lot more open and enjoyable without over-regulation. Can you honestly sit there and defend something like Exchange Rule 431 (aka "PDT Rule")? :rolleyes:


If the government did'nt protect the stock market it would'nt exist.


B) By definition, if government were owned by business (or vice-versa), that is not free enterprise. And business does not own government. Only a few corporations have influence in the government because we've abandoned constitutional restraints, we've voted to be fucked and have created a cronyist system... One that you seem to support, by your continued arguments for bullshit regulatory agencies and bullshit regulations.


Constitutional restraints? Like what? Corporate personhood? Money as speach? Citizens United? If your against those things then yeah.


THERE IS NO "DEMOCRATIC OVERSIGHT"...

What institutions? What do you think they'd do? I can't argue against a ghost...


Well ... the Fed for example, was basically set up by private corporations, you have private security firms that basically act as private armies for corporations.

There is no democratic oversight and thats what I am fighting for, your fighting for less of it.


If I build a town on my land, I might have a considerable degree of control over the town, but I don't have 100% control over the economy or the government. I'd also go to prison if I killed anyone or built a mini-Berlin wall to keep everyone in. So not sure what you're getting at...


Well ... he had more control over that city than a government would, because its "HIS" town.


Hmmm... I've been called a "utopian" by leftists, who believe if we followed their ideas the world would revolve around peace, love and harmony... :rolleyes:


Strawman, your making shit up.

Your being called a utopian because you have a concept of Capitalism that is really divorced from reality.


You've failed to show any of this "empirical evidence"... and facts and statistics aren't necessarily true. You've only shown some propaganda, and some highly misleading charts without citing any reliable sources. I could make the same things in Photoshop. I also thoroughly debunked everything you've yet posted. And maybe most amusing was the fact that your data rarely supported the conclusions you drew from it, and in fact often contradicted them.


All of those sources are realiable, all of the facts are from reliable souces, you hav'nt proven otherwise, or even attempted, nor have you given any facts.

If you can make these things in photoshop WITH THE FACTS do it.

Also you never debunked any of it, you juts made assumptions, and you made "what if" arguments.

Every single country that followed economic liberalization suffered from it, their economy tanked.

[kapitalyst]

1) Why shouldn't the people control the means of production? What is your objection to worker's democracy (communism)?

2) What is your proposed solution? Libertarian capitalism?


The people can control the means of production. Go create it, contribute to the market... You just can't take it from people who've invested their time, labor and money into creating their own means. It's funny that your solution is taking things from other people, rather than creating new things yourself.

Communism is antithetical to individual liberty. Communism says fuck my interests for my own life because I owe something, which I've not contracted to supply, to some vague abstraction such as "society".



When you are on this site please use our accepted definitions, otherwise go somewhere else.


The Marxist definition of "capitalism" is private ownership of property/capital. Therefore "capitalism" can be anything, and thus blamed for anything... even when private ownership is just an illusion (e.g., Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany). You can even call the USSR "capitalist". The fact of the matter is that capitalism is always going to exist, because someone will always control property.

You guys aren't at all united in opinion, nor do you use the same definitions. For someone who says they care about freedom, I find it a bit ironic you'd tell me to "get lost" and not to express my own views, eh? If I'm not wanted here, fine... I'll go... But I thought this was the purpose of OI...



The basic basis of this dark age is that the Western capitalist countries have became a mall economy based upon artificial occupations rather productive ones, in addition to destructive imperialist endeavours around the world, e.g Iraq. I have actually described this before:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=6357


Unfortunately for your argument, there are a number of problems here... Western countries have become a "mall economy" thanks to their own governments and voter support for pseudo-socialist ideas. There has never been a "pure free market", as that would require anarchy, but we've gotten so far from it that none of this surprises us a bit. In fact, we predicted it. And one of the major mechanisms for decline in western economies is unbridled inflation, perpetrated by the central banks... inflation outpaces GDP growth, and tears the wealth out our pockets for government spending.

Also, imperialism and militarism are not economic ideologies. They are neither capitalist nor communist. You can be a communist without harboring internationalist views, and be an imperialist and militarist.



1). The first point of failure, is the supply and demand roots of the capitalist price system.

If there is an abundant supply of something, then capitalism adapts by creating artificial scarcity. This can see in any digital industry, with things like copyrights and patents. In long-lasting products, capitalists create planned obsolescence so that they won't last that long, forcing the consumer to rebuy.


Actually, the price mechanism is responsible for the resounding success of the market system. The price mechanism, in a healthy economy, leads toward equilibrium. High prices makes various market participants, who compete with one another, want to sell goods -- increasing supply and driving prices lower. Lower prices (oversupply) typically makes consumers want to buy goods and consume more, thus reducing supply and raising prices toward equilibrium. However, when economic activity is restricted or excessively regulated, this cannot function correctly.

Planned obsolescence has happened a few times, but your claim is simply false. Technology is advancing with furious rapidity. Computers get smaller and more powerful very quickly. Things can become obsolete quickly. As soon as you create one CPU, GPU or system, you already have great ideas on how to make the next one even better and faster. A lot of times, these things occur to you while you're making a system, and you simply cannot stop and throw away everything you've done. I experience the same thing writing software. What do you propose? That we make computers and keep them around for 40yrs without producing better ones? I vote nay...



On the other side is this system is artificial demand. Everyone in the first world is intimately familiar with this through the advertisements, which took up at least $500 billion dollars last years. Advertisements create artificial demand in consumers for products that they don't particularly want or need.


This is not "artificial demand". It doesn't matter why I want something, my demand for it is real. One of the main purposes of advertisements is to alert people of the existence of products and their features. I'm sure no one wanted a car or airplane in 1776... and back then, you might have argued it was something we didn't need? That's another place I take issue with communism... communism tries to tell me what I want and need, and how much of it.



2). The second point of failure is the wasteful overlap that occurs from reinventing the wheel. This occurs in part due to the privatisation of research information, such as with proprietary software, but also in large part due to a lack of social organisation. A huge amount of reinventing happens in the open source world, because they lack organisation.


Open-source lacks organization because no one is being paid or making money (with a few exceptions, like Red Hat). The motivation to create things for profit is greater than idealism. That's why capitalism works, and creates rapid technological progress, and communism does not.



3). The third point of failure is network effect which arises from social inertia. Existing organisations don't want new technologies to arise that will eliminate their existence. For example, oil companies don't want their oil assets to be devalued by widely available energy alternatives like nuclear fusion, so they may reduce development in that area.


I'm sure a lot of buggy-makers resisted the automobile, but it didn't quite work out for them. Creating superior technology is more profitable than suppressing it. If I knew a way to create superior computers, you'd bet your ass I'd pour every ounce of strength and effort I have into creating it.

As I've already said, most oil companies are furiously competing to create a new source of renewable energy and the technology it requires. Whomever succeeds in bringing it about will make untold fortunes from it. As of now, the problem is that no one knows how to do it.



4). The fourth point of failure is the focus on short term profit rather then long term benefit and sustainability. For example, capitalists over-exploit renewable resources, such as fish stocks and forests.


There was a time when we didn't understand how the over-use and exploitation of natural resources was dumb. Now we've begun to understand it quite well. Renewability will increase profitability, both short and long-term. Businesses have learned this. Timber companies now have systems for harvesting and replanting their land, and don't simply clear-cut and move on anymore. We also now have fish farming, which has even been introduced in impoverished regions to provide a stable source of food to the people. And I support Wildlife and Fisheries, which has caused our local game populations (especially deer and turkey) to explode to near pre-European colonization levels in my area.



5). The fifth and final point of failure is disinterestedness. Capitalists can just be disinterested in important research which results from, for example, a lack of R&D funds.


Anyone can be disinterested in R&D... people would be almost totally disinterested without the potential to profit from it.



That doesn't make any sense. If you love technology you should strive for a golden age of technological development - not a dark age.


I was being sarcastic...



I will respond that I push anarcho-communist technocracy because I believe it will allow us to vastly improve our technological development and it will create social harmony.


Except it wouldn't exactly be anarchy, would it? Technocrats would be the central planners and domineers of society, thus becoming the state.

It actuality, communism is a great way to achieve economic and technological stagnation. Without the profit motive, few people will give a shit about breaking new ground. The ambitious entrepreneur just becomes another nobody. Without the need to earn money to meet your needs and wants, few people will feel compelled to do shit, let alone work, and instead responsibility would be diffused to "the other guy"... sort of like the Bystander Effect diffuses social responsibility to an injured/sick person to other people:

tGaJrgi_SpE

You vision of the future might be possible in the very distant future. But we'll need a hell of a lot more free enterprise to create that technology... maybe even a thousand more years of it. When we have machines doing everything for us, maybe I'll join in. :)



Humans are peaceful and social animals despite what bourgeoisie ideology - i.e Judaism and Judeo-Christainty - state about that.


This is not Judeo-Christian or "bourgeoisie" ideology. In fact, Christian ideology tells people to be peaceful and kind (e.g., "love thy neighbor as thyself") and encourages, in a way, some "individual socialism" and resistance to human nature. But this is not ideology, but scientific fact we're dealing with.



1) Killing someone with your bare hands, feet, knees, elbows, etc can be incredibly hard work, especially if that person tries to run, them you will have to chase them down in a persistence hunt.


It's really not that hard if you really want to kill -- and as I said, you can always grab a tree branch and make short work of a skull. And it doesn't take killing to be violent. Weaponry is a product of our violent nature, not the cause. You're too smart to say something that silly...



2) In order to go through such an incredbile effort the person must be desperate. And what makes such a person desparate? Nothing less then the scarcity of fundamental resources such as food, water, health care, etc - which are things the capitalists have failed to effectively provide throughout history which is why the state has came into to do it (universal health care systems, e.g Cuba).


This is also absurd... There are far too many documented cases of "sport killing" alone. And most murders and physical assaults are "crimes of passion", like a jealous lover killing their mate and the one he/she was cheating with. Rarely is the cause of human violence desperation for resources. Violence for ideological reasons is indeed more common. ;)

I'm also shocked that anyone would praise the oppressive, despicable regime in Cuba... I actually support the idea of free healthcare, just as I support free police protection and fire departments... these are all basic, essential services.



Libertarian capitalism has never occurred throughout history. The capitalists have always been intertwined with the state.


Never in a "puritan" sense. The times in which we were nearest to it were the times in which economic and technological progress occurred the most rapidly. Social progress was also rapid during those times, however we became to heavy-handed and allowed government bloat at our own socioeconomic expense.

But true socialism/communism has never existed either... so what's your point?



So you think there should be a state to stop profiteering from spiraling out of control? But how is that at all compatible with capitalism? If there is a group of 1% of the population (the capitalists) that control the economy how are they not going to also control the state and using it for their means?


I have no idea what you're trying to ask or what the point is... How is that compatible with capitalism? What? I thought that according to you, all of this, everything, is capitalism?

The "capitalists" don't control the economy. Please... They've never stopped me from doing anything. Nor are they stopping you. When I finally decided to become an entrepreneur, my personal motto became: "If you can't join 'em, beat 'em." Pretty effective way of thinking. :cool:



How is "getting a lot of dumbasses" out of seats of political power going to fundamentally change the working of the economy?


Erm... because they're the ones fucking things up? This is like asking me how deposing a brutal emperor would cause fundamental political change...



How are "capitalists a tool of government"? That really doesn't make sense to me. The government clearly functions to serve the interests of the capitalists, for example, if you want to rob a bank that holds the capitalist's wealth, the state will run across the country (or the world via interpol) to find you and punish you.


This is simply wrong. The government uses particular businesses as a tool to maintain power and exert control over our lives and the economy. It also, however, does a few things for us which is why people tolerate government. Do you support bank robbery, anyway? Robbing a bank would be stealing money from your entire community, not a few capitalists. If you raped a little girl, you would go to prison too. And you'd be hunted to the ends of the earth. If that's the interest of the capitalists, you might want to align your interests with capitalism. ;)



The state is a tool of the capitalists that serves to protect them, including in cases of economic crisis, through bailouts, as I think we are all intimately aware now. It has never occured in any other way. Where has libertarian capitalism ever happened in real life then?


Again, these assumptions you've made about these things are rather outrageous. Government existed long before what you call capitalism. Government was always a tool for power-hungry people to control the lives of the people. Totalitarian government is very common in the pages of history, and so is imperialism, militarism, etc. The state is not a tool of capitalists, my friend. In modern times (and in ancient times), particular businesses have become a useful tool for government to gain more power and influence, and in return they throw a few bones to their cronies.



There are vibrant communist movements in the East, and now that the West is going through a global economic recession / new dark age (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-2000s_financial_crisis), we are seeing social movements there too. In my opinion, this will eventually combine to create world socialism within the next hundred years.


Hardly compelling. The vast majority of people don't want communism and never will. And large amounts of people are beginning to agree with us about the reasons for economic recession and social problems. Why? Because we're right. If your argument is that capitalism is unfair and such, I grant you that. But the reasons for economic decline in the west are clear. Besides, your goal is to bring down capitalism, not promote free enterprise and make it better.



Welcome to capitalism. Nowhere in capitalism is a wonderful place to live as the vast majority of people (the workers) are treated poorly by the capitalist elites.


Unfortunately, few people agree with you there (well, that's fortunate, I suppose). And as I've said, I could care less about a system that allows private ownership without free enterprise. Only the "third world" lives in general poverty. They all want to come here, as they view us as a beacon of free enterprise capitalism and individual liberty, despite our status as such, in reality, having drastically faded.



But the communists around the world have been managing to make things much better for the working class by providing services to the people. The red corridor is an incredible example of this, there are a group of some of the world's poorest people - rejected by the capitalist plutocracy - and now the Maoist rebels are helping them out.

In fact, throughout history Socialists have been working to make the world a much better place to live by fighting for basic rights like a minimum wage.


The rebels will surely help those people. They want their support in their attempt to seize power and become the new "capitalists"... the outcome of every communist revolution thus far.



This is a good start. Around the world people are waking up and realising that the majority of people should be able to control things and not just the top 1% (aka the capitalists)


Yeah, let's take -- not create. We had this sort of "movement" a few times, most notably against so-called "robber barons". We see where that got us... :tt2:

When one liberates one's own mind from delusions of limitation, the doors to almost everything are opened.



But there are still many people (such as you) who apparently think that the people shouldn't control the economy and that right should instead be given the 1% of capitalists.


The people should control the economy... and if it weren't for our governments, they would. They're the ones who buy the products and services, and decide what should be made and how much of it. And "the wealthy" are part of "the people" too.



Our eastern comrades are *leftists* who are working to give control of society back to the people which is the antithesis of right-wing ideologies of authoritarianism and elitism such as Nazism and capitalism.

Nazism is not a "right-wing" ideology. Economically, Hitler was rather moderate and somewhat left-leaning.

Our goal is to give control of society and the market back to the people, and take it out of the hands of government and their cronies and thugs. This is the antithesis of left-wing ideologies like totalitarianism and authoritarianism, statism and central-planning and oligarchical control of everything -- like the USSR and Cuba. ;)

[Revolution starts with U]

Sorry, that's complete BS. Free enterprise and government are foes. I can get along just fine without them.

Except that historically, sans the state people tend to prefer public and communal property.




Unfortunately, "public ownership" is a myth. If everyone were literally able to own something, then no one actually owns it. And in the absence of ownership, someone will figure out a way to dominate. Typically, that will be the state. They have big guns and soldiers... so long to liberty and competition...

Except that we, hands-down, have absolutely no evidence of domination before the concept of property came on the scene. And it makes sense... how can you dominate somone if you don't have and cannot hire bigger guns?




No one said it was "great for everyone" before the Fed. Free enterprise progressively makes things better for everyone.

Which comes back to the age-old question, for whom? Any of the scraps the working class has recieved from capitalism they have had to fight tooth and nail for. Do you deny this?



I'm not even sure what you're trying to say... In free enterprise, no one can have 100% power. Only a government can have 100% power... they can kill you, and the law just doesn't apply. If a business becomes very large and powerful, I'll just seize the opportunity to undercut them and beat them -- deliver a superior product and price to consumers. Then you'll see they hardly had any power... just a temporary position they enjoyed. As long as no law or institution bars me from participating in the market, I have economic liberty.
Until the offset their externalities on some disenfranchised population forcing you to either make the same immoral decision, or get out of the market.



A textbook example of contextomy... chop my quote into a piece that makes it possible to distort the meaning. "But hey, fallacy is a way of life that I accept and love..." - RSWU ;)

So you did not say "central banks are a great way to abolish money?" I took nothing you said out of context. You just cannnot accept that what you said was absurd. It's okay. We all make that mistake sometimes. As Skooma says "we believe things socially, not because we actually know what we're talking about."




The board of directors typically is elected...

And your problem w the shareholders sharing that vote with the workers is...?


Why do you continue to support a system that has proven more elusive than the fountain of youth and has been twisted into oppressive regimes that throw people into concentration camps and murder on a grand scale? :tt2:

I... don't?




What does Blackwater have to do with anything? I don't support Blackwater, nor do I think they should have the authority to invade anyone.

Im talking about PDA, private defense agencies. In an ancap fantasy land this is what we would be dealing with. Blackwater will become our police force. I know, you're not an anarchist. But you are against government, so let's make it consistent. Do you, or do you not think Blackwater will be just as, if not more, abusive than the modern police force?




No, the USSR was not socialism... true socialism does not exist. The USSR is just an example of where the pursuit of it takes us.

Sure, if you abandon democracy in the name of ideology, ya. That will happen. If we are so sure we are right we have to shoot people and lock them behind giant walls to enforce it, ya, that is what will happen. I don't run from the "terrors of socialism" the same way capitalists run from the terrors of capitalism when they say "all the bad in the capitalist system is the government's fault."


"Lovingism" simply isn't ever going to come to fruition. You admit people are greedy and ambitious when arguing

I admit that people are greedy. And as such I do not support things that allow one to undemocratically express their will over the populace.
Economic self-determination; everyone has a democratic say over the productive aspects of society in which they help to create
Economic oligarchy; this is mine, do what I say or gtfo and stfu

[CommunityBeliever]

You just can't take it from people who've invested their time, labor and money into creating their own means. Why not though? When Spartacus organised chattel slaves to revolt against their masters, would you haved denounced him for freeing slaves that the masters put their time, labor, and money into acquiring?


It's funny that your solution is taking things from other people, rather than creating new things yourself.What do you mean? Its the *workers* that are actually putting their labor into creating things and the capitalists are essentially just parasites that exploit their surplus value.


That's another place I take issue with communism... communism tries to tell me what I want and need, and how much of it.Communism has nothing to do with telling what you want or need, but rather with creating democratic control over the economy, so what is your real objection to communism?


Therefore "capitalism" can be anything, and thus blamed for anything... Capitalism definitely is something. It is the exclusive control of society and the economy by a minority of capitalists, for example, today 1% of the population owns 95% of the world's wealth.


This is not "artificial demand". It doesn't matter why I want something, my demand for it is real. That is just word jugglery - you are defining "artificial" to mean nothing in the context of demand, rather then actually addressing the implied meaning of the term.


They're the ones who buy the products and services, and decide what should be made and how much of it. And "the wealthy" are part of "the people" too.The people don't control the means of production so they have minimal control over the economy in capitalism and they don't have any control of the economy through consuming products, because what people want is a function of marketing which includes artificial demand, but of course, you won't accept that there is such a thing as artificial demand because that will through a wrench in your "people control the economy through consuming" bullshit.

For further information, comrade Carlin pretty elegant describes just how much freedom of choice we really have in capitalism:

yt49DsfKDMc


Lower prices (oversupply) typically makes consumers want to buy goods and consume more, thus reducing supply and raising prices toward equilibrium.But what if there is essentially no price, in other words post-scarcity? Then you get artificial scarcity, which is to a large extent why capitalism is incompatible with technological progress at this point.


Creating superior technology is more profitable than suppressing it.Please consider the development of technology from the eyes of a capitalist. As a capitalist, I have a large share of capital, then if some technology gets developed that will devalue my capital, naturally I will want to suppress it.


Technology is advancing with furious rapidity. Computers get smaller and more powerful very quickly. Things can become obsolete quickly. As soon as you create one CPU, GPU or system, you already have great ideas on how to make the next one even better and faster.Actually we are going through a technological dark age. And to top it off conditions are worsening with furious rapidity. We just had that Deepwater Horizon oil spill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill)which was incredibly destructive, and Fukushima (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster), and the incredible destruction of the Libyan war, not to mention the global economic recession (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-2000s_recession), and on on on. Things are getting worse, until eventually revolutionary socialism will emerge and allow for the people to recover from this dark age.


That's why capitalism works, and creates rapid technological progress, and communism does not.Capitalism has created a technological dark age, and communism will vastly improve our technological productive forces to allow us to have technologies like friendly AI, nuclear fusion, etc.


It actuality, communism is a great way to achieve economic and technological stagnation.No it isn't, capitalism has caused a technological dark age. The next stage in human history is communism which allow us to recover from this destructive system and allow us to greatly expand our technological forces of production allowing us to have nuclear fusion, friendly AI, molecular assemblers, etc.


Without the profit motive, few people will give a shit about breaking new ground.That is completely false. The workers are the ones actually "breaking new ground" and that are responsible for production. If all of the capitalist parasites disappeared tomorrow we would continue doing just fine.


You vision of the future might be possible in the very distant future.Capitalism is not compatible with post-scarcity resource levels or Kardashev-1 technologies, or really any sort of technological progress in the contemporary era - hence the description "dark ages" - so my vision of the future certainly is possible, but not until we progress to socialism first.


we'll need a hell of a lot more free enterprise to create that technology... I have actually read history so I know the state is responsible for most modern technologies like the internet, computers, spacecraft, and nuclear energy, etc. Free enterprise is not driving progress, and it hasn't been for at least one hundred years.


Rarely is the cause of human violence desperation for resources.:rolleyes:


Government existed long before what you call capitalism. Government was always a tool for power-hungry people to control the lives of the people.Goverment certainly has existed long before capitalism, since the emergence of class society, and it has always been a tool of the ruling class:


Class society: a society divided into a ruling class and one or more non-ruling classes. This sort society arose around 12,000 years ago with the elimination of foraging.
Government: a tool of ruling class of a class society.

In the case of capitalism the ruling class are referred to as "capitalists". As such, according to these definitions government is a tool of the capitalists but of course you will attempt to reject this by propagating your own utopian definition of capitalism.


The vast majority of people don't want communism and never will. Over the course of the next hundred years I think you will become intimately aware of what the people really want (communism).


Yeah, let's take -- not create. We had this sort of "movement" a few times, most notably against so-called "robber barons". We see where that got us... :tt2:The capitalists are getting in the way of our desire to create new technologies (like friendly AI), so first we must take control of the means of production then we can develop our technology and recover from our new dark age / economic recession.


Our goal is to give control of society and the market back to the peopleActually you don't want to change anything. You want to continue the control of the capitalist elite over the majority of the people, that is to say that you are a capitalist.

[kapitalyst]

Why not though? When Spartacus organised chattel slaves to revolt against their masters, would you haved denounced him for freeing slaves that the masters put their time, labor, and money into acquiring?

If I was an ancient Roman possessing the values I possess today, I'd have been a supporter of Spartacus.



What do you mean? Its the *workers* that are actually putting their labor into creating things and the capitalists are essentially just parasites that exploit their surplus value.


You really don't get business do you? This is like saying a great architect is of no value because he didn't carry bricks to the work site.



Communism has nothing to do with telling what you want or need, but rather with creating democratic control over the economy, so what is your real objection to communism?


"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is arguing for central planning in some form. Yes, people will have to be ordered, by someone else, what they really need and don't need. Someone will have to the overseer and give out the orders. Otherwise, it would just be a type of capitalism. People, being greedy, would just take what they wanted without a Big Brother figure.

Then when you have a Big Brother, you still don't have actual communism. Everything just belongs to Big Brother... he just feeds, houses and clothes you and you work for him.

Democracy is also a rather flawed concept. It basically equates to mob rule. 51% can impose its will on the 49% by force. 51 can decide that they get to eat and the 49 others don't. Or does Big Brother disallow such things, meaning there actually isn't any democracy? I prefer the highest degree of liberty possible -- taking my own risks, working (or not) with other people as I so choose, making my own agreements/contracts, etc.



That is just word jugglery - you are defining "artificial" to mean nothing in the context of demand, rather then actually addressing the implied meaning of the term.


Oh, I'm "word juggling"? The term "artificial" implies that there was interference from without the system to make demand (e.g., the state interferes in the economy or people are forced to purchase something). Someone deciding to buy something because a commercial made it "look cool" does not constitute "artificial" demand. It's just demand.



The people don't control the means of production so they have minimal control over the economy in capitalism and they don't have any control of the economy through consuming products, because what people want is a function of marketing which includes artificial demand, but of course, you won't accept that there is such a thing as artificial demand because that will through a wrench in your "people control the economy through consuming" bullshit.


One of the major flaws in your logic is that those who are wealthy or own a means of production aren't people or part of "the people". Actually, they are. They're simply people who have been successful in business, and/or people who have offered an employment opportunity which others have accepted.

What people want is the function of their choice as an individual, which can be influenced by marketing. Your theory here is simply outlandish and downright false. Are we already taking on the role of Big Brother, deciding what people actually need/want? ;)



For further information, comrade Carlin pretty elegant describes just how much freedom of choice we really have in capitalism:


Sounded to me like he gave a pretty accurate description of how government has ruined the market...

Why are there only a few large banks, insurance companies, credit card companies, airlines, etc? Because of the crony regulatory system. It's damned near impossible to cut through the red tape and start such businesses. If I ever do try to start a bank like I envision, and talked about in another thread, the government will probably come after me for "predatory pricing" -- offering the consumer a deal/fairness that greatly exceeds that of the competition.



But what if there is essentially no price, in other words post-scarcity? Then you get artificial scarcity, which is to a large extent why capitalism is incompatible with technological progress at this point.


I don't get your point... seems to contradict your earlier talk of "post-scarcity".



Please consider the development of technology from the eyes of a capitalist. As a capitalist, I have a large share of capital, then if some technology gets developed that will devalue my capital, naturally I will want to suppress it.


No. As a capitalist, you want to develop your own version of that technology as quickly as you can and try to offer better pricing and quality. You simply won't be able to suppress the technology, unless you are a government crony they will step in to protect.

For example, a small company invents a "wonder drug" for diabetes. But not so fast... Government, yes government, owns the peoples' bodies (so they think)... only they decide what you can put into it. So the small company must run a gauntlet of regulatory marathons with the FDA (and possibly the DEA and other organizations); during which time they will question the "necessity" of the new drug and its merits/safety. They have to protect the pharmaceutical establishment cronies, because they are government's means of controlling what drugs people use (and the cronies comply, because government is their "daddy" -- he makes sure they maintain their status so long as they comply with orders). If this new company doesn't seem fit to be a new crony, they could just deny approval of this life-saving drug for any reason they please. This is all done under the guise of "protecting" consumers -- pseudo-socialist corporatism.

The solution? Abolish bullshit like the FDA and force government to remain within the bounds of its constitutional authority. It should also be a crime for government to "pick winners and losers" in the business world, and vice-versa. The corrupt crony system must be demolished. Communism? Again, no thanks... In communism, I'd have either no choice or just one...

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/8617/communismq.th.jpg (http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/8617/communismq.jpg)



Actually we are going through a technological dark age. And to top it off conditions are worsening with furious rapidity. We just had that Deepwater Horizon oil spill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill)which was incredibly destructive, and Fukushima (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster), and the incredible destruction of the Libyan war, not to mention the global economic recession (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-2000s_recession), and on on on. Things are getting worse, until eventually revolutionary socialism will emerge and allow for the people to recover from this dark age.


Yes, instead of trying to solve the problems in sensible ways, we should try something that already failed again...



Capitalism has created a technological dark age, and communism will vastly improve our technological productive forces to allow us to have technologies like friendly AI, nuclear fusion, etc.


We've got a lot of problems. But this is simply not a "technological dark age"...



That is completely false. The workers are the ones actually "breaking new ground" and that are responsible for production. If all of the capitalist parasites disappeared tomorrow we would continue doing just fine.


Gacky wants to kill them, you want to make them "disappear". :lol:

Generally, the type of workers you're referring to are uneducated, lack much of any skill and are just performing simple, repetitive tasks that anyone could do. They're not breaking any new ground at all. That's why they're there, and not working at a law firm, medical research facility or investment bank. If it were left to them, there'd be nothing to make.



Capitalism is not compatible with post-scarcity resource levels or Kardashev-1 technologies, or really any sort of technological progress in the contemporary era - hence the description "dark ages" - so my vision of the future certainly is possible, but not until we progress to socialism first.


Right...



I have actually read history so I know the state is responsible for most modern technologies like the internet, computers, spacecraft, and nuclear energy, etc. Free enterprise is not driving progress, and it hasn't been for at least one hundred years.


It's kind of hard for free enterprise to do anything when it hardly exists, and is strangled where it does to a small degree... But now you're coming out and admitting you're a statist then?

You'll also notice a few things about your chosen examples... 1) the internet is only what it is today thanks to private business 2) same with computers -- and the modern computer was actually first created by a capitalist 3) spacecraft have seen very little progress in decades -- the private sector is developing next-gen spacecraft... 4) nuclear energy was first created to kill lots of people very quickly -- and would also be useless without the private sector.



Goverment certainly has existed long before capitalism, since the emergence of class society, and it has always been a tool of the ruling class:


Class society: a society divided into a ruling class and one or more non-ruling classes. This sort society arose around 12,000 years ago with the elimination of foraging.
Government: a tool of ruling class of a class society.



So... you acknowledge that you were wrong, then?



In the case of capitalism the ruling class are referred to as "capitalists". As such, according to these definitions government is a tool of the capitalists but of course you will attempt to reject this by propagating your own utopian definition of capitalism.


I reject this because this is simply absurd... your reasoning is less than what I expect of someone like you... :rolleyes:



Over the course of the next hundred years I think you will become intimately aware of what the people really want (communism).


Over the course of the next hundred years we'll be dead...

Well... "No one lives forever, no one... But with advances in medical science and my high level of income, I don't think I'll have any problem living to be 245 or 300..." -- Ricky Bobby :lol:



The capitalists are getting in the way of our desire to create new technologies (like friendly AI), so first we must take control of the means of production then we can develop our technology and recover from our new dark age / economic recession.


We simply don't have the capacity to create these things yet. And if the world had been converted to a communist society 50 years ago, we'd be lucky indeed to have 80s technology today.



Actually you don't want to change anything. You want to continue the control of the capitalist elite over the majority of the people, that is to say that you are a capitalist.

Please... :rolleyes:

[Revolution starts with U]

If I was an ancient Roman possessing the values I possess today, I'd have been a supporter of Spartacus.

Let us consider something less arbitrary than your values. Let us consider you have the same economic and material situation you do now. Would you have supported him?




You really don't get business do you? This is like saying a great architect is of no value because he didn't carry bricks to the work site.

Far more often than not the capitalist and the entrepreneur are entirely different persons. The capitalists sometimes let entrepreneurs become capitalists. But in their role as entrepreneur, are often just as exploited by ownership as labor...because entrepreneurialship IS labor.
When you realize by labor we don't mean just the blue collar floor workers, but anyone who produces value to the productive effort, maybe then you will stop making these comments. We can only hope.



"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is arguing for central planning in some form. Yes, people will have to be ordered, by someone else, what they really need and don't need. Someone will have to the overseer and give out the orders. Otherwise, it would just be a type of capitalism. People, being greedy, would just take what they wanted without a Big Brother figure.

Unless there is just a massive surplus such as to allow people freely take.
It's fiction, I know, and that is fine. But consider the Star Trek society with its replicators. The confederation or w/e simply cannot understand profit and hoarding... abundance simply made those concepts irrelevant.


Democracy is also a rather flawed concept. It basically equates to mob rule. 51% can impose its will on the 49% by force. 51 can decide that they get to eat and the 49 others don't. Or does Big Brother disallow such things, meaning there actually isn't any democracy? I prefer the highest degree of liberty possible -- taking my own risks, working (or not) with other people as I so choose, making my own agreements/contracts, etc.
Historically democracy often does not work out like that. People, when given the chance, tend to democratically support individual rights and the rule of law.
But sometimes democracy screws up and allows past oppressions to continue, such as slavery and racism.
What would you have us replace it with; rule by the 2% over the 98%? As that old imperialist windbag Winston Churchill said: Democracy is the worst form of government... but it's the best we've come up with so far.

Really tho, to get back to the point. This is all irrelevant. When given the chance democratically, the majority often prefers individual rights and the rule of law (at least for themselves :lol:). On top of that, democracy doesn't mean voting. All kinds of undemocratic systems vote. Democracy literally means "people power."





One of the major flaws in your logic is that those who are wealthy or own a means of production aren't people or part of "the people". Actually, they are. They're simply people who have been successful in business, and/or people who have offered an employment opportunity which others have accepted.

And in their role as people, we thank them. But we will not continue to allow their oppression, in the role of capitalist.




No. As a capitalist, you want to develop your own version of that technology as quickly as you can and try to offer better pricing and quality. You simply won't be able to suppress the technology, unless you are a government crony they will step in to protect.

or a Private Defense Agency





Generally, the type of workers you're referring to are uneducated, lack much of any skill and are just performing simple, repetitive tasks that anyone could do. They're not breaking any new ground at all. That's why they're there, and not working at a law firm, medical research facility or investment bank. If it were left to them, there'd be nothing to make.

And that justifies the oligarchical position of the capitalist why?

[kapitalyst]

Let us consider something less arbitrary than your values. Let us consider you have the same economic and material situation you do now. Would you have supported him?


I worded it that way because if we were born in ancient Rome we wouldn't be Marxists, libertarians, etc. We would, most likely, have been indoctrinated with ancient Roman values and sided with the empire.

Yes, I would support Spartacus if I were the same person I am today living in ancient Rome. I'd go so far as to give him food, weapons and refuge if I could. I'd do the same thing for black slaves on the run in America.



Far more often than not the capitalist and the entrepreneur are entirely different persons. The capitalists sometimes let entrepreneurs become capitalists. But in their role as entrepreneur, are often just as exploited by ownership as labor...because entrepreneurialship IS labor.
When you realize by labor we don't mean just the blue collar floor workers, but anyone who produces value to the productive effort, maybe then you will stop making these comments. We can only hope.


I do realize it's not just "blue collar floor workers", but that is generally who is being spoken of... I've never seen any of you stepping up to defend a white collar worker earning $200k a year. ;)

To me, your definition sounds as if the "wicked capitalists" are just investors... people very important to starting and expanding businesses -- who can be anyone from Goldman-Sachs to "ma and pa" investors.



Unless there is just a massive surplus such as to allow people freely take.
It's fiction, I know, and that is fine. But consider the Star Trek society with its replicators. The confederation or w/e simply cannot understand profit and hoarding... abundance simply made those concepts irrelevant.


How do you propose we maintain a flock of 50,000,000,000 chickens? And how do we have enough corn/grain not only to feed them all, but to also have massive surplus for every person? That would hardly be a "massive surplus" of chickens... just a good bit per capita. I think we're going to need a few extra planets...



Historically democracy often does not work out like that. People, when given the chance, tend to democratically support individual rights and the rule of law. But sometimes democracy screws up and allows past oppressions to continue, such as slavery and racism.


True. Just saying that the flaw is there.



What would you have us replace it with; rule by the 2% over the 98%? As that old imperialist windbag Winston Churchill said: Democracy is the worst form of government... but it's the best we've come up with so far.


I also like this one: "The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter." So true! :lol:

However, we don't have democracy, never have. "Democracy" is a term which has been misused in the political arena probably more than any other. It is also a rather vague term in the sense that it's used. We have a republic in the US and so does the rest of the "free world".

What would I "replace" it with? I prefer republican-minarchy. I want the smallest amount of government necessary, and hope that some day that is no government. No "democracy" is needed to vote on what I can/can't do so long as I follow the basic, sensible rules of society (e.g., no murder, stealing, etc).



And in their role as people, we thank them. But we will not continue to allow their oppression, in the role of capitalist.


I wish you could see that yes, there are some "capitalists" fucking people (e.g., bank overdraft fees) but the problem is hardly this vague, ghostly "capitalism". These notions of "wage slavery" and such are just silly. Free enterprise is good, and neither businesses nor individuals are allowed to actually hurt people in a free market. We have a totally different problem on our hands... one that has plagued mankind like an undying cancer since the beginning of human civilization.



or a Private Defense Agency


What? :confused:

I still don't see why you keep talking about this... Most libertarians such as myself see a military as one of the basic, essential functions of government. We don't think the military should be privatized, or that someone like Blackwater can declare war on China.

This would be different, of course, from something like hiring private bodyguards... something that's absolutely essential for some people (e.g., certain celebrities).



And that justifies the oligarchical position of the capitalist why?

Again, and what justifies restricting people from making money through investing and finance? Or even as some of your extreme comrades might suggest, confiscating their things or even killing them?

[Revolution starts with U]

I worded it that way because if we were born in ancient Rome we wouldn't be Marxists, libertarians, etc. We would, most likely, have been indoctrinated with ancient Roman values and sided with the empire.

Yes, I would support Spartacus if I were the same person I am today living in ancient Rome. I'd go so far as to give him food, weapons and refuge if I could. I'd do the same thing for black slaves on the run in America.

Ya I really find all this bringing character into the question as irrelevant. First, not all individual capitalists are dicks. Some want to be good guys, just like Henry 2 wasn't a bad king. It's just the system that puts them in oligarchical control of the productive efforts of society.
I admit that had I lived in ancient Rome, I probably would (be a slave, because Im slavic... which is where the word slave comes from :lol:) have supported Ceaser initially... at least until he was made dictator. I just don't believe the benevolent dictator is worth struggling through all of the malicous ones).
But it's all beside the point because if we lived back then we wouldn't be the same people, period :lol: So, tho I didn't start this line of questioning, I apologize for continuing it.



I do realize it's not just "blue collar floor workers", but that is generally who is being spoken of... I've never seen any of you stepping up to defend a white collar worker earning $200k a year. ;)

I will step up to defend them, in their role as workers. But I will not defend them if they deny the revolutionary cause.


To me, your definition sounds as if the "wicked capitalists" are just investors... people very important to starting and expanding businesses -- who can be anyone from Goldman-Sachs to "ma and pa" investors.

You got it ;)
Not really just investors, but ownership. People who really add not much more, if any, value than anyone else at the companies, but which reap the largest share of the rewards simply because they said "this is MINE!"
Like I said, forgive me if I find the whole ownership system rather childish.



How do you propose we maintain a flock of 50,000,000,000 chickens? And how do we have enough corn/grain not only to feed them all, but to also have massive surplus for every person? That would hardly be a "massive surplus" of chickens... just a good bit per capita. I think we're going to need a few extra planets...

I am sure people would have said the same thing 500 years ago. When freedom allows science to prosper, ways to shape the universe to our will are found.
We have enough food to feed the world, and all the chickens right now. We also could encourage more healthy eating, which will reduce the demand for chickens. With genetic engineering we can make rice that can withstand flood, corn that grows in the desert, and possibly cloned meat.
And we could colonize the solar system. All things are possible with a little conscious ingenuity. :thumbup:



True. Just saying that the flaw is there.

Undoubtedly. You know that old addage; "democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner." True, but at least the sheep has a choice. In the natural order the wolves just eat him, nuff said. Maybe he can plea for a quick and painless death.



I also like this one: "The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter." So true! :lol:

:lol:


However, we don't have democracy, never have. "Democracy" is a term which has been misused in the political arena probably more than any other. It is also a rather vague term in the sense that it's used. We have a republic in the US and so does the rest of the "free world".

Exactly. I actually did one of my term papers on this in college. What we have is a constitutional democratic republic. We have a constitution, which establishes the rule of law. That law is dealt with by our Republican form of government. And we use the democratic method.
The constitution is the law. And then we elect representatives and vote on certain issues. "Democracy" is not a style of government, but a method of governance.
I think the best kind of democracy, the most democratic so-to-say, would be one which requires at least an 80% majority or the decision simply does not get made.
I find the biggest problem with democracy is, as Anakin Skywalker said, we cannot sit around and wait for the senate to deliberate, someone must make them come to a decision. But I also think that is its biggest strength, at other times. Democracy doesn't allow the rash decisions of a dictator. And, again, the benevolent dictator is simply not worth sloshing through all the terrible ones.

.. sorry to go off on a little rant there :D

What would I "replace" it with? I prefer republican-minarchy. I want the smallest amount of government necessary, and hope that some day that is no government.
I mean, I agree with you. It all comes down to what we think the government should protect... and I include public property over private there.


No "democracy" is needed to vote on what I can/can't do so long as I follow the basic, sensible rules of society (e.g., no murder, stealing, etc).

But you making money off the backs of everybody doing all the work IS stealing. It's condoned stealing, much like taxes... but it is a textbook case of theft nonetheless. Unless your value to the productive effort has been decided democratically, I really see no reason not to say you are imposing your will upon the workers.



I wish you could see that yes, there are some "capitalists" fucking people (e.g., bank overdraft fees) but the problem is hardly this vague, ghostly "capitalism". These notions of "wage slavery" and such are just silly. Free enterprise is good, and neither businesses nor individuals are allowed to actually hurt people in a free market. We have a totally different problem on our hands... one that has plagued mankind like an undying cancer since the beginning of human civilization.

"Private" property (in the sense of property a given individual has singular control over) arose directly in tandem with government. They simply cannot be untied. Strong property rights require a strong government.
Businesses may or may not be allowed to harm people in a free market. but they do. And it can be years and millions of victims before the problem is even caught.
Private property basically boils down to; this is mine, do what I say or gtfo. To engage in social production (meaning production involving more than one person) requires one party to submit to the other's will. I can find no way that private property can be said to be compatible with liberty. It is oligarchy, by definition.



What? :confused:

I still don't see why you keep talking about this... Most libertarians such as myself see a military as one of the basic, essential functions of government. We don't think the military should be privatized, or that someone like Blackwater can declare war on China.

This would be different, of course, from something like hiring private bodyguards... something that's absolutely essential for some people (e.g., certain celebrities).


Ok. I understand that. But I am saying, extend the market argument to the police, and the market starts to look entirely inadequate to protecting liberty. Market democracy, ie "voting with your dollars" gives 1 person unlimited votes while giving another none, and as such it simply cannot respond to human demand adequately. The interests of the propertied class will always win out.



Again, and what justifies restricting people from making money through investing and finance? Or even as some of your extreme comrades might suggest, confiscating their things or even killing them?

Nothing justifies killing them, even if I ever have to shoot someone in defense of the revolution. Killing is simply wrong, always. The fact that there is existence instead of nothing demands our defense of existence in all its forms.
And nothing justifies the confiscation of their property unless they violently oppose the liberation of the common man.
I actually, tho I oppose the interests of wall street, think that the stock market will be one of the last things to go. Stock markets are a great way to get individual investment into companies. I think a little bit of interest, a little bit, encourages investment, and discourages hoarding.
But, again, there is no reason why you should become ruler of the company because you took a chance upon it. The only thing that allows that is respect of private property, and the only thing that insures it is the state.
The workers are taking a chance by working their as well, often a far more physical chance. As I asked you another time, the board is already voted upon by the shareholders; what is wrong with extending that vote to the workers?

[CommunityBeliever]

One of the major flaws in your logic is that those who are wealthy or own a means of production aren't people or part of "the people". The capitalists are enemies of the people because they since they suppress technologies that will devalue their capital and they exploit the workers.


Gacky wants to kill them, you want to make them "disappear". :lol:Actually, I was thinking after we construct our new Gulags to house the enemies of the people, we could create special solitary confinement (http://solitaryconfinement.org/) camps for the capitalists. Since the capitalists aren't willing to care about anyone other then themselves, I think we should give them what they want and truly separate them from ever having to care about other people.

However, I recognise that we won't be able to capture all of them so I also like comrade Gacky's proposal of simply killing them ;)


Yes, instead of trying to solve the problems in sensible ways, we should try something that already failed again...Communism has never failed, the only thing that has failed are communist revolutions. For example, the October revolution was defeated from within when its revolutionary ideals were abandoned.


You really don't get business do you? This is like saying a great architect is of no value because he didn't carry bricks to the work site.Most capitalists like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are parasites and financial swindlers that don't deal with any creative tasks like architecture. Besides, in socialist society, all creative tasks can be collaborated on rather then hoarded by capitalists:

http://www.adciv.org/Open_collaborative_design

Open collaborative design involves applying principles from the remarkable free and open-source software (http://www.adciv.org/Free_and_open-source_software) movement that provides a powerful new way to design physical objects, machines and systems. All information involved in creating the object or system is made available on the Internet – such as text, drawings, photographs and 3D computer-aided design (http://www.adciv.org/Computer-aided_design) (CAD) models – so that other people can freely re-create it, or help contribute to its further evolution. It is essentially the same principle that is used to progress scientific knowledge, however in reality it is much more open and transparent than much of contemporary scientific research.


You simply won't be able to suppress the technology, unless you are a government crony they will step in to protect. Since the capitalists have considerable economic power, of which they use to control the state, they tend to use it to suppress new technologies. However, to say that it is the only tool in the capitalists arsenal would be ridiculous, they also use their control of the media to slander new technologies. For example, see what the capitalist Thomas Edison did in the War of the Currents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents) to suppress AC technology, which included slandering it by claiming it is "too dangerous". In particular, Edison killed Topsy the elephant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_%28elephant%29) to try to convey the lie that AC technology is inherently dangerous.


We simply don't have the capacity to create these things yet. And if the world had been converted to a communist society 50 years ago, we'd be lucky indeed to have 80s technology today.Considering that we are basically using 70s technology today - i.e. the UNIX operating system and its non-GC C programming language both of which were developed around ~1969-1973, I do hope that someday we will be lucky enough for the capitalists to provide us with eighties technology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine). :)

In communism this won't even be an issue because our technological productive forces will be immensely expanded leading to technologies like nuclear fusion.


We've got a lot of problems. But this is simply not a "technological dark age"...If you don't consider this to be a technological dark age, then you lack vision.

States


But now you're coming out and admitting you're a statist then?Coming out and admitting lol? When did I ever denied that I am a statist? I love the state since it has been and still is the main source of artificial intelligence research! It was the state organisation DARPA (defense advanced research projects agency) that lent huge amounts of money to developing the Lisp machines, without which they may never have been possible in the first place.

As Marxists though we generally prefer to have a socialist state (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_state), which is ruled by the working class, rather then a capitalist state which is used for imperialist endeavours, like the war in Iraq which is used by the capitalists to gather oil resources. Eventually, though once our socialist state fulfils its purpose of developing our productive forces (including AI) it will wither away resulting in stateless communism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_communism

Stateless communism, also known as pure communism, is the post-capitalist stage of society which Karl Marx predicted would inevitably result from the development of the productive forces. Stateless communism is closely related and connected to world communism.

Strictly speaking, pure communism is a stage of social development where material and productive forces are advanced to a degree where actual freedom (freedom from necessity, and thus from wage labor and alienation from work) for every person is possible. The state apparatus becomes redundant because classes cease to exist.


You'll also notice a few things about your chosen examples... 1) the internet is only what it is today thanks to private business 2) same with computers -- and the modern computer was actually first created by a capitalist 3) spacecraft have seen very little progress in decades -- the private sector is developing next-gen spacecraft... 4) nuclear energy was first created to kill lots of people very quickly -- and would also be useless without the private sector.Actually, in all of those cases things have gotten much worse after they were transferred to the control of the capitalists from the state. Our current dark age could've been largely prevented or reduced by increasing state invention in technological matters.

1) The internet became infested with advertisements and artificial scarcity. 2) Computers became infested with the UNIX pestilence (http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/freebooks.html). 3) Spacecraft has seen little progress in the past decades since being brought over to the private sector, but they did develop this luxury space hotel (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/photo/2011-08/18/c_131058365.htm) for the bourgeoisie to reside in. I think we can do without that type of shit, so lets end capitalism. 4) There has been scarcely any development in nuclear energy in the private sector, however, our comrades in the Chinese state have started to develop thorium nuclear reactors (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/china-thorium-power/).


Abolish bullshit like the FDAYou are crazy man. What other essential government organisations do you want to abolish?

The FDA is provided with the essential task of ensuring public health by researching the health effects of food, drugs, tobacco, etc and the interactions between them, in order to warn people of any negative effects and to constrain the capitalists from marketing overly destructive products.

1) The FDA is provided with the essential task of researching the health effects of the interaction of a group of products on an individual. Given a group of n different products, the FDA must check this many interactions between them:

http://www.texify.com/img/%5CLARGE%5C%21%5Csum%20_%7Bi%20%3D%200%7D%5E%7Bn%7 D%20%5Cbinom%7Bn%7D%7Bi%7D.gif

Since that formula yields a very high number, the FDA job is considerably challenging and it requires the resources of an entire state and access information to all corporate products. This task isn't reasonably possible for a capitalist organisation.

2) After researching health effects, is provided with the important task of informing consumers of them and limiting what capitalist organisations of capable of doing. For example, now the FDA warns consumers that cigarettes are addictive and dangerous and it generally prevents them from effecting people below the age of 18:

http://www.prwatch.org/files/images/NewCigWarning.jpg

Before the FDA and the HHS came along the cigarette corporations could sell cigarettes and nobody knew they were addictive and unhealthy, and the cigarette corporations even preyed on children by addicting them well they were still young. The FDA should at the very least be allowed to protect children from the capitalists.


They have to protect the pharmaceutical establishment croniesSo abolish the pharmaceutical companies so that they can't effect government.

Elitism


Democracy is also a rather flawed concept. It basically equates to mob rule. 51% can impose its will on the 49% by force. 51 can decide that they get to eat and the 49 others don't. Or does Big Brother disallow such things, meaning there actually isn't any democracy? I prefer the highest degree of liberty possible -- taking my own risks, working (or not) with other people as I so choose, making my own agreements/contracts, etc.I see. So we need an educated elite to rule over the stupid mob.


Generally, the type of workers you're referring to are uneducated, lack much of any skill and are just performing simple, repetitive tasks that anyone could do. They're not breaking any new ground at all. That's why they're there, and not working at a law firm, medical research facility or investment bank. If it were left to them, there'd be nothing to make.Ah so we need an educated elite to direct the unskilled and uneducated workers.


Please... :rolleyes: You want to continue the rule of an elite group, so you don't want to significantly change society.

[Revolution starts with U]

Don't forget the tobacco companies denied they were addictive and dangerous, even when they knew they were. That has nothing to do with government.

[kapitalyst]

Actually, I was thinking after we construct our new Gulags to house the enemies of the people, we could create special solitary confinement (http://solitaryconfinement.org/) camps for the capitalists. Since the capitalists aren't willing to care about anyone other then themselves, I think we should give them what they want and truly separate them from ever having to care about other people.

However, I recognise that we won't be able to capture all of them so I also like comrade Gacky's proposal of simply killing them ;)


LOL! :lol:



Communism has never failed, the only thing that has failed are communist revolutions. For example, the October revolution was defeated from within when its revolutionary ideals were abandoned.


"[...] when its revolutionary ideals were abandoned"... Get used to that, as it will be the inevitable outcome every time.



Most capitalists like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are parasites and financial swindlers that don't deal with any creative tasks like architecture. Besides, in socialist society, all creative tasks can be collaborated on rather then hoarded by capitalists:


You obviously don't know how either of those men became successful... and I guess you also don't realize they aren't "hoarders", and have done more for others, by their own accord, than the government has.



Since the capitalists have considerable economic power, of which they use to control the state, they tend to use it to suppress new technologies. However, to say that it is the only tool in the capitalists arsenal would be ridiculous, they also use their control of the media to slander new technologies. For example, see what the capitalist Thomas Edison did in the War of the Currents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents) to suppress AC technology, which included slandering it by claiming it is "too dangerous". In particular, Edison killed Topsy the elephant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_%28elephant%29) to try to convey the lie that AC technology is inherently dangerous.


And what type of electricity do I have here in my home? AC...



Considering that we are basically using 70s technology today - i.e. the UNIX operating system and its non-GC C programming language both of which were developed around ~1969-1973, I do hope that someday we will be lucky enough for the capitalists to provide us with eighties technology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine). :)


Lisp is a 1950s programming language... by your logic then, we would have 1950s technology had we become commies and embraced the inferior LISP machines because of that fact...



If you don't consider this to be a technological dark age, then you lack vision.


Let's be reasonable...


Coming out and admitting lol? When did I ever denied that I am a statist? I love the state since it has been and still is the main source of artificial intelligence research! It was the state organisation DARPA (defense advanced research projects agency) that lent huge amounts of money to developing the Lisp machines, without which they may never have been possible in the first place.


Maybe I'm mistaken and it was someone else, but I thought you denied being a statist? Thought you claimed to oppose authoritarianism? central planning?

End of the Lisp Machines

With the onset of the "AI Winter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_Winter)" and the early beginnings of the "PC revolution" (which would gather steam and sweep away the minicomputer and workstation manufacturers), cheaper desktop PCs soon were able to run Lisp programs even faster than Lisp machines, without the use of special purpose hardware. Their high profit margin hardware business eliminated, most Lisp Machine manufacturers went out of business by the early 90s, leaving only software based companies like Lucid Inc. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_Inc.)Open Genera (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Genera) Lisp Machine software environment as well as the Macsyma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macsyma) computer algebra system.


(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine)

You keep bringing up LISP machines over and over, and I've continually had to tell you (over and over) that the technology became obsolete. It was no longer any good, and cheaper, faster and more powerful alternatives came about. The LISP language itself also became obsolete, as it is too slow and too complex. We don't need or want LISP machines or the LISP language...

Your AI winter was the bursting of a hype and funding bubble, quite like the dotCom bubble. Far too much was promised and expected out of AI research, and when it failed to deliver people were burned out and the plug was pulled on a lot of bloated projects. You can't expect much else when something is over-hyped and over-funded. AI research is important, and it is still ongoing today. The private sector has accomplished far more than the AI bubble's players. Shit... Video game developers alone have achieved more in AI development.



As Marxists though we generally prefer to have a socialist state (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_state), which is ruled by the working class, rather then a capitalist state which is used for imperialist endeavours, like the war in Iraq which is used by the capitalists to gather oil resources. Eventually, though once our socialist state fulfils its purpose of developing our productive forces (including AI) it will wither away resulting in stateless communism:

Yes, I suppose the path to freedom and stateless society is to make it bigger, more powerful, more invasive, more oppressive and to diminish individual liberty... :unsure:

Your beloved state is responsible for the war in Iraq. It was done for nationalist and imperialist initiatives, not for the actual oil companies or "capitalists". If the American constitution was followed, that war (along with those in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya and even the "War on Drugs") would be illegal. None of this would have ever happened had we rejected statist ideology and prevented this government monster from ever being born.



Actually, in all of those cases things have gotten much worse after they were transferred to the control of the capitalists from the state. Our current dark age could've been largely prevented or reduced by increasing state invention in technological matters.

1) The internet became infested with advertisements and artificial scarcity. 2) Computers became infested with the UNIX pestilence (http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/freebooks.html). 3) Spacecraft has seen little progress in the past decades since being brought over to the private sector, but they did develop this luxury space hotel (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/photo/2011-08/18/c_131058365.htm) for the bourgeoisie to reside in. I think we can do without that type of shit, so lets end capitalism. 4) There has been scarcely any development in nuclear energy in the private sector, however, our comrades in the Chinese state have started to develop thorium nuclear reactors (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/china-thorium-power/).


1) Right... the internet is such a horrible technology. We should have just let it remain a military communications technology.

2) I don't care much for Unix. Isn't it funny though, that it's at the core of the open-source community you adore and claim to be some sort of commie software movement? :lol: It's also worth mentioning that Unix became so pervasive because it was embraced by the government...

3) Space travel has only recently come into the private sector, and NASA has just retired the shuttle. In the hands of government, space travel stagnated and we were stuck with those lame ass shuttles for decades. In the coming decades, space travel is going to blossom into something truly amazing.

Obviously, the first private-sector space travel efforts will cater to the wealthy. It's fucking expensive to develop that technology and make flights. They have to have a source of revenue to continue. Some day space travel will be a normal part of life for everyone, just like TVs, computers, electricity, cars, etc.

4) Not sure what you're smoking, but I'd like to buy a bag... :lol: and many governments are working to over-regulate (even outright ban) the technology.

You're a fan of the Chinese government and call those sick fucks "comrade"? Now I'm truly frightened... :mellow:



You are crazy man. What other essential government organisations do you want to abolish?


I know, I'm crazy... Fuck the FDA... Telling me what to eat, drink and consume is not an essential role of government. It's an essential role of tyranny. When I go into a grocery store and buy some steak, I don't feel safe because of the FDA. I know the food will be good because ABC Farms wants me to buy more. And as an individual, I've been fucked over by them and other "regulators" enough already...



2) After researching health effects, is provided with the important task of informing consumers of them and limiting what capitalist organisations of capable of doing. For example, now the FDA warns consumers that cigarettes are addictive and dangerous and it generally prevents them from effecting people below the age of 18:


The FDA isn't preventing shit. Kids still smoke cigarettes if they really want to. Preventing kids from smoking is the role of parents. It's fine that we have the law requiring one to be 18 to buy tobacco, and that's all we need. Every four-year-old in America knows smoking is unhealthy.



Before the FDA and the HHS came along the cigarette corporations could sell cigarettes and nobody knew they were addictive and unhealthy, and the cigarette corporations even preyed on children by addicting them well they were still young. The FDA should at the very least be allowed to protect children from the capitalists.


I take it you've been fully indoctrinated by the anti-smoking lobby... :rolleyes:



I see. So we need an educated elite to rule over the stupid mob.


Are you asking if we need a socialist technocracy? ;)



Ah so we need an educated elite to direct the unskilled and uneducated workers.


Same question... socialist technocracy?

I'm not talking about society, just the internals of an individual business. And yes, a business needs to be managed by someone who knows what they're doing -- who knows how to coordinate work efforts and get the job done.



You want to continue the rule of an elite group, so you don't want to significantly change society.

Actually, you don't want to change society... you want to continue the rule of the state, authoritarianism and tyranny by law.

[CommunityBeliever]

You obviously don't know how either of those men became successful... and I guess you also don't realize they aren't "hoarders", and have done more for others, by their own accord, than the government has.They became successful through parastic and exploitative practices.


Lisp is a 1950s programming language... by your logic then, we would have 1950s technology had we become commies and embraced the inferior LISP machines because of that fact...

The reason you are wrong about this is that you are associating Lisp with non-AI programming languages, when really Lisp is more like building material:

"Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material." - Alan Kay

Since Lisp is fluid building materal and its foundational principles are sound and intuitive it has remained the state of the art in language design for over 50 years.


You keep bringing up LISP machines over and over, and I've continually had to tell you (over and over) that the technology became obsolete.

Considering that we still use Von Nuemman machines and multiple address space operating systems, the Lisp machine architectures have not become obsolete, on the contrary, they remain the state of the art.


We don't need or want LISP machines or the LISP language...What I want is the state of the art, and that is Lisp and the Lisp machines. If this isn't true, show me otherwise.


AI research is important, and it is still ongoing today.

AI research has been greatly diminished since the AI winter, which is one factor which has resulted in our technological dark age.


They have to have a source of revenue to continue. Some day space travel will be a normal part of life for everyone, just like TVs, computers, electricity, cars, etc.That will happen after we create socialism and thereby recover from the capitalist-onset technological dark age.


Your beloved state is responsible for the war in Iraq. It was done for nationalist and imperialist initiatives, not for the actual oil companies or "capitalists".Bullshit. The war in the Iraq is profiting of oil resources. Same thing with the war in Libya:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/Libya_location_map-oil_%26_gas_2011-en.svg/501px-Libya_location_map-oil_%26_gas_2011-en.svg.png


None of this would have ever happened had we rejected statist ideology and prevented this government monster from ever being born.1) Economic statism and imperialism are two different things. I support Keynesian economic policies only in the sense that it is better then anarcho-capitalism, which is my archenemy.

2) Imperialism is a product of capitalism, read war is a racket, imperialism the highest stage of capitalism, confessions of an economic hitman, etc.


I know, I'm crazy... Fuck the FDA... Telling me what to eat, drink and consume is not an essential role of government. The FDA helps to protect you and your children against the capitalist criminals. The capitalists couldn't give less of a fuck about your health.


Are you asking if we need a socialist technocracy? ;)No I was referring to what you were your saying. Your are an elitist. ;)


Actually, you don't want to change society... you want to continue the rule of the state, authoritarianism and tyranny by law.

1) I ultimately want to create stateless communism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_communism) and thereby eliminate the state.

2) I also want to create new technologies, and states have been the greatest source of technological progress in the past century. Additionally, the state can help to restrict the capitalists, in this sense anarcho-capitalism is my archenemy.

[kapitalyst]

They became successful through parastic and exploitative practices.


Yeah, ok... :sleep:



The reason you are wrong about this is that you are associating Lisp with non-AI programming languages, when really Lisp is more like building material:

"Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material." - Alan Kay


I guess the analogy fits if you build houses from old cardboard. :lol:

You can call any language "building material", but it's still a programming language.



Since Lisp is fluid building materal and its foundational principles are sound and intuitive it has remained the state of the art in language design for over 50 years.


You're really hung up on LISP, aren't you? Are you fluent in any other programming languages?



Considering that we still use Von Nuemman machines and multiple address space operating systems, the Lisp machine architectures have not become obsolete, on the contrary, they remain the state of the art.


If by "state of the art" you mean painfully slow, then sure...

N-O-S-T-A-L-G-I-A

wlvYGqi3Dbc&feature=related



What I want is the state of the art, and that is Lisp and the Lisp machines. If this isn't true, show me otherwise.


The burden of proof is on you if you want to resurrect a dead technology and get me to use it.

The proof we needed to embrace the modern PC was the fact that it blazed past the LISP machines -- and even ran LISP programs in software faster than they could natively.



Bullshit. The war in the Iraq is profiting of oil resources. Same thing with the war in Libya:


Enter: Obama... It's not like he wants oil prices to get too high. After all, he wants another term. This war in the east BS is all about imperial interests -- keeping oil prices as low as possible. American oil companies would actually benefit from foreign oil sources being shut off. We just don't produce enough domestically (though we could, if the state allowed it).



The FDA helps to protect you and your children against the capitalist criminals. The capitalists couldn't give less of a fuck about your health.


Actually, any sensible businessman knows that making customers sick is a great way to lose money and damage your company's reputation.

If the government gave a fuck about my health and quality of life, I wouldn't be sitting here -- despite having grade-A insurance and the ability to pay -- hardly able to turn my head from this neck pain.



No I was referring to what you were your saying. Your are an elitist. ;)


Nope, I'm an individualist. I wouldn't mind a bit if everyone got rich and made me the poorest rich guy. That would be great.



1) I ultimately want to create stateless communism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateless_communism) and thereby eliminate the state.


And I find it amusing that your means to that end is to create a massive state that controls everything.

[RGacky3]

Actually, any sensible businessman knows that making customers sick is a great way to lose money and damage your company's reputation.


Well obviously they don't because it happens all the time, because many times peopel can't trace it to the drug.


If the government gave a fuck about my health and quality of life, I wouldn't be sitting here -- despite having grade-A insurance and the ability to pay -- hardly able to turn my head from this neck pain.


Well .... They don't care, thats the point, we're trying to change that.


Nope, I'm an individualist. I wouldn't mind a bit if everyone got rich and made me the poorest rich guy. That would be great.


your an elitist in the sense that you believe the poor DESERVE to be poor and the rich DESERVE to be rich, because they are some how better, elite.

[CommunityBeliever]

I guess the analogy fits if you build houses from old cardboard.In a dark age you are lucky to even have old cardboard.


You're really hung up on LISP, aren't you? Are you fluent in any other programming languages?Actually, I also like to use Prolog, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prolog) the second most popular AI language, mainly by embedding it in Lisp (http://pseudofish.com/blog/2011/08/05/prolog-in-clojure/) in this sense I still essentially use Lisp for everything, and that will probably be true until we break out of this technological dark age and reinvent computing allowing us to have integrated programming systems like blocky.io extended to a ZUI.


Actually, any sensible businessman knows that making customers sick is a great way to lose money and damage your company's reputation.Why do you have this conception that businesses are never the source of problems?


If by "state of the art" you mean painfully slowLet me put this, politely: please don't ignorantly insult Lisp ;)


N-O-S-T-A-L-G-I-AIts not nostalgia I want to create an operating system for artificial intelligence and the Lisp machines are best example of that we have to work with, for example they had a single address space (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_address_space_operating_system) - that meant you could safely share pointers across the entire system, a significant benefit when dealing with any significant task, e.g AI. Show me a single address space operating system I can use today, and that would be a good start.


The proof we needed to embrace the modern PC was the fact that it blazed past the LISP machines -- and even ran LISP programs in software faster than they could natively.The modern systems use software that is deficient, e.g UNIX, C, XML scripting languages like PHP and Javascript, etc. They are full of artificial stupidities like the idea that you have to save files, load files, represent code as plain text files, use IPC, etc. In essence, modern PCs suck.


And I find it amusing that your means to that end is to create a massive state that controls everything. My means are nothing less then to overthrow capitalism, giving power to the people well also creating post-scarcity technologies.

But in the process I recognise that anarcho-capitalism (what you are conveying) where everything is ruled by private tyrannies is my archenemy. I don't want to get rid of a state and necessary organisations like FDA and the federal reserve from capitalist society, in this sense you could call me statist. I am trying to lend you a hand, if you want to call me a "statist" even though I ultimately seek stateless communism, then go ahead.

[kapitalyst]

Shut the fuck up.

That's all I needed to hear... good day, sir...

[CommunityBeliever]

That's all I needed to hear... good day, sir... If you first carefully read this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/capitalism-mismanagement-technology-t162417/index.html) then we can begin to have a civilised discussion.

[kapitalyst]

Good day to you too. When you actually learn a tiny bit about Lisp so that you aren't conveying utter stupidities like "Lisp is painfully slow" (its obviously not slow if it was used to build entire fucking machines) then you can come back and have a civilised discussion. If you want to actually learn Lisp, there are many good resources online and I will create a new thread about it.

Right, your civility can only be obtained by not saying anything you don't like or disagree with... I see... :sleep:

"[...] its obviously not slow if it was used to build entire fucking machines"

Super Mario Bros is obviously not outdated because it was a fucking best seller...

Horse and buggy is obviously not obsolete transportation because it was used to transport fucking everything...

And what of C? C is obviously not slow if it is used to build entire fucking machines...

Fact: Lisp machines became obsolete when the modern PC came about, which was not only faster but ran Lisp in software faster than Lisp machines.

Fact: In head-to-head benchmarks, C outperforms Lisp. The PC is faster than Lisp machines. C is faster than Lisp.

All theory aside, in practice and practical cases C is much faster (and I'd argue C is theoretically faster too). Then there's the question of where is all this great Lisp software? Why aren't its furious proponents one-upping us with this 'uber language'... excuse me, 'building material'? :crying:

[CommunityBeliever]

Dear kapitalyst, feel free to read my recent thread http://www.revleft.com/vb/capitalism-mismanagement-technology-t162417/index.html which addresses your misconceptions about performance (some of which were clearly frustrating for me because you kept repeating them). Please before you repeat your anti-Lisp conclusions, at least read what I written!


Fact: Lisp machines became obsolete when the modern PC came about, which was not only faster but ran Lisp in software faster than Lisp machines.

Address the distinction between separate computing architectures one being the UNIX / MASOS / Von Nuemman / non-GC architecture optimised for the PDP-11 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-11) and which is generally known as "UNIX", and the other being Lisp architecture which includes introspection / reflexivity and automatic persistence / versioning / memory management / compilation / optimisation based upon AI search algorithms and persistent data structures.


Then there's the question of where is all this great Lisp software? Why aren't its furious proponents one-upping us with this 'uber language'... excuse me, 'building material'? :crying:The "great Lisp software" (e.g the Lisp machines) has been forgotten to history, similarly much of the knowledge of the Greeks / Romans was forgotten in the medieval dark ages until the renaissance.

We need to have our own AI renaissance. Unfortunately, the cost of such an endeavour today would be in the billions, so it seems that social progress through movements like the Arab Spring, the eurozone protests, occupy together, etc should be our main concern because social progress may allow us to have a society that provides sufficient funding for technology, especially AI.